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by Clif Garboden

THURSDAY

8:30 (2) Basic Black: Bobby McFerrin’s Master Class. An interview with the talented musician whose career was all but permanently derailed when the stupid Republican Party mistook his ÒDon’t Worry, Be HappyÓ toss-off as the ultimate express of African-American assimilationism. To be repeated on Sunday at 5 p.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Kingdom of the Blind, part one. Detective Tanner seeks the help of, yes, a blind man during an investigation. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Sunday at 10:30 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Fall of the Aztecs and Conquest of the Incas. The Americas’ native populations didn’t stand a chance against the 16th-century European invaders who saw them as obstacles along the path to easy riches. Historian Wood discusses the 50-year conquest of the most advanced Native American cultures, starting with the Aztecs and the Incas. To be repeated on Friday at 10 p.m., on Sunday at 1:30 a.m. and at 6 p.m. on Channel 44, and on Tuesday at midnight. (Until 2 a.m.)

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Kingdom of the Blind, part one. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

FRIDAY

8:00 (44) Conscience and the Constitution. A generally untold story about 85 Japanese-Americans who refused to be drafted into World War II unless their citizenship rights were restored. Naturally, the government refused to let these guys participate in the society they were forcing them to protect and instead sent them to prison for two years. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Beyond Barbed Wire. And, irony of ironies (see 8 p.m. above), the most decorated unit in American military history was the Japanese-American 100th Infantry/442nd Regimental Combat Team. Okay, a certain amount of public-relations may have been involved, but still . . . (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Fall of the Aztecs and Conquest of the Incas. Repeated from Thursday at midnight.

10:00 (44) P.O.V.: Rabbit in the Moon. Rounding off WGBX’s Japanese-American Abuse Night, we have a 1991 Sundance Film Fest award winner from Emiko Omori that documents life in World War II Japanese-American concentration camps through home movies and personal accounts. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

SATURDAY

1:00 (25) Baseball. The Sox versus the Oakland A’s.

3:00 (5) Hockey. Stanley Cup playoff conference-final action.

3:00 (7) Basketball. NBA playoff action.

6:30 (2) La Plaza: El d’a que me quieres. Photographer Freddy Alborta offers a poetic recollection of the day in 1967 when he photographed the body of Cuban freedom fighter ChŽ Guevara. (Until 7 p.m.)

8:00 (5) Speed 2: Cruise Control (movie). A remarkably lame 1997 attempt to capitalize on the runaway success of 1994’s Speed. Sandra Bullock’s back (without Keanu Reeves), but even her charms can’t save a minute of this one. She’s traded in her bus for a cruise ship, and Reeves has been replaced by an LAPD officer played by Jason Patric. In believable psycho Dennis Hopper’s place, we get Willem Dafoe. Just don’t bother. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (7) Sphere (movie). Perhaps Speed 2 isn’t such a bad idea after all. Another big-deal cast in a 1998 sci-fi flop. Barry Levinson directed this adaptation of a novel by Michael Crichton about a team of scientists living on the ocean floor and studying a mysterious big round object. With Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote, Queen Latifah, and Huey Lewis. (Until 11 p.m.)

SUNDAY

Noon (7) Basketball. NBA playoff action.

1:00 (25) Baseball. The Sox versus the Oakland A’s.

2:00 (2) Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (movie). The 1965 witchy-old-woman classic with Bette Davis starring as the accused-but-unconvicted lover/killer who ends up being taken advantage of by her cousin (Olivia de Havilland) and her cousin’s boyfriend (Joseph Cotten). (Until 4:30 p.m.)

5:00 (2) Basic Black: Bobby McFerrin’s Master Class. Repeated from Thursday at 8 p.m.

6:00 (44) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Fall of the Aztecs and Conquest of the Incas. Repeated from Thursday at midnight.

7:00 (5) Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story (movie). You can start here and work your way up to Marilyn Monroe’s less-cheerful bio at 9 p.m. Ashley Rose Orr stars as little Shirley, except that from what we’ve seen of her performance, little Ashley doesn’t have the chops, and the line between cloying and cute is way too thin anyway. Emily Hart steps in when Shirley hits puberty. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Take a Girl like You, part one. Well, we read the press release and are tempted to dig up ÒKingsley Amis’s brilliant comic novelÓ so we can figure out the plot. But perhaps we’ll just watch this adaptation starring Rupert Graves and Sienna Guillory. The theme is sex in 1950s England. Graves plays Patrick Standish, a cad who sets his cap for a young and innocent schoolteacher named Jenny (Guillory) who’s holding out for marriage. Mixed in is something about a lecherous landlord, his wife, a social klutz from a Òposh school,Ó and Jenny’s possibly bisexual roomie. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. and on Monday at 9:40 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Blonde (movie), part one. Marilyn Monroe went from sex symbol to object of pity to drag-queen obsession to political pawn to emblem of sex in a repressive society. Then finally we were allowed to appreciate her for the vivacious and actually talented screen comic that she was. We fear this two-part TV bio is going to bring all that other stuff back. Australian Poppy Montgomery stars as MM. Checking Montgomery’s career bio, we discover that she’s been in a lot of forgotten TV movies, played ÒBarbara’s sisterÓ in 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress, and first appeared on screen in a 1994 effort called Tammy and the T-Rex, which appears to have been about a mad scientist who transplants the brain of a murdered high-school kid into a dinosaur model. Would they’d show that instead. With Matthew O’Sullivan, Kirstie Alley, Ann-Margret, and Wallace Shawn. To be concluded on Wednesday, starting at 9 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7) Saturday Night Live Mother’s Day Special. We didn’t know there was still a cast. Perhaps this will be old clips — which got really old after the cable stations ran them twice a day for several years. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Kingdom of the Blind, part one. Repeated from Thursday at 9 p.m.

11:30 (2) The American Experience: Truman, part two. Repeated from last week. We’re certainly learning about several sides of ÒGive-’em-hell HarryÓ in this exhaustive bio. What a character. Jason Robards narrates. (Until 1:30 a.m.)

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Masterpiece Theatre: Take a Girl like You, part one. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

1:30 a.m. (2) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Fall of the Aztecs and Conquest of the Incas. Repeated from Thursday at midnight.

MONDAY

7:30 (7) Jeopardy. It’s Tournament of Champions Week. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (5) Con Air (movie). Continuing Good Cast/Dumb Movie Week on network TV, ABC gives us Nicolas Cage, Monica Potter, John Cusack, John Malkovich, and Danny Trejo in a 1997 action show about a bunch of convicts who hijack an airplane. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: MacArthur, part one. General Douglas MacArthur had his own ideas about how things should be done and wouldn’t budge from his position — even when the president told him to change his mind. The first installment of a two-part personal and career bio of the original Ònot fade awayÓ man. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Wednesday at 1 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:40 (44) Masterpiece Theatre: Take a Girl like You, part one. Repeated from Sunday at 9 p.m.

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) The American Experience: MacArthur, part one. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

TUESDAY

8:00 (2) Frontline: LAPD Blues. From the days when the mob controlled a lot of Hollywood and the cops didn’t do much about it to more recent abuses of power, the LAPD has had a tough time living up to the Joe Friday ideal (if hippie-kicking Joe was actually an ideal of anything except bad acting). New Yorker writer Peter J. Boyer investigates the charges of racism and brutality that made the force a national laughing stock. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Nova: Decoding Nazi Secrets. Repeated from last week. Re-enactments and interviews paint a picture of the Allied codebreakers who cracked Enigma — Hitler’s super-secret cipher system. To be repeated on Thursday at midnight. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Fall of the Aztecs and Conquest of the Incas. Repeated from Thursday at midnight.

1:00 (44) Beyond Human. Someday you could be the mechanical man/woman. A look at research developing teeny-tiny little wind-up body parts. Actually, we not sure what powers them. Perhaps research is also developing a built-in battery compartment. (Until 2 a.m.)

WEDNESDAY

9:00 (2) Conquistadors with Michael Wood: Search for El Dorado and All the World Is Human. Historian Wood continues his chronicle of the short-order conquest of the Americas’ most advanced native cultures. As far as the Spanish were concerned, it was, of course, all about plundering the gold. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Blonde (movie), part two. The conclusion. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7) The West Wing. The season finale, in which the president no doubt approaches, but stops short of confronting, the scandal of his illness. Would we be the first to question the plot device that had his alleged deception hinge on not disclosing that he had MS on his daughter’s college application? We’ve seen a bunch of college applications, and Òfull history of fatherÓ wasn’t on any of them. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (5) Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Regis’s overblown quiz show meets (and marries) The Newlywed Game with this Òcouples edition.Ó Great — now we’ll have two indecisive people maundering on about answering the questions. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) The American Experience: MacArthur, part one. Repeated from Monday at 9 p.m.

THURSDAY

8:00 (7) Season Finales. The end of the year for Friends, Will and Grace, and E.R. We could keep W&G for another season, but could the other two just go away for good? (Until 11 p.m.)

8:30 (2) Basic Black: Mothers and Sons. Three men discuss the maternal influences in their lives. Possibly more interesting than it sounds. ÒMom was always there for me . . . Ó (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Kingdom of the Blind, part two. As if his going blind weren’t bad enough, Detective Tanner’s son vanishes and then turns up in the hands of a former gangster. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44.

Midnight (2) Nova: Decoding Nazi Secrets. Repeated from Tuesday at 9 p.m.

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Kingdom of the Blind, part two. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

Issue Date: May 10 - 17, 2001