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by Clif Garboden

THURSDAY

8:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with bell hooks. Darren Duarte interviews the author and feminist philosopher. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Hide and Seek, part one. Okay, the description for this series of blind-detective Tanner mysteries is roughly the same as what they told us the first time. Detective loses sight, turns clairvoyant, colleagues cover for him so he stays on the job. Clive Owen stars with Claire Skinner. 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.)

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

4:00 a.m. (2) Frontline: Organ Farm, part two. Repeated from last week. More medical hope from pig cells with a behind-the-scenes look at a secret transgenic organ farm. (Until 5 p.m.)

FRIDAY

1:00 (25) Baseball. The Sox versus the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

2:00 a.m. (44) Don Giovanni Unmasked. Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky stars as two main characters — Don G. and his servant, Leporello, who’s recast as a 1930s Hollywood director. Sort of specialty work. (Until 3 a.m.)

4:00 a.m. (2) Austin City Limits. Who’s up watching music TV at this time of day? Phish fans. (Until 5 a.m.)

SATURDAY

6:00 (44) Turandot at the Forbidden City. A 1998 " true-life setting " of Puccini’s opera in Beijing. Directed by Zhang Yimou. Hope the setting isn’t too true to life; act one opens with a decorative array of human heads (of suitors who failed to answer Princess Turandot’s stupid " three enigmas " ). Hint: the correct answer to riddle #2 is not " Jefferson City. " (Until 8 p.m.)

6:30 (2) La Plaza: Getting to Fenway. The story of Manny Delcamen, the first Boston high-school player to be drafted by the Red Sox in more than 30 years (that’s why we think of them as the home-town team) and son of Dominican baseball pro Kuki Delcamen. To be repeated on Monday at 9 p.m. and on Wednesday at 2:30 a.m. (Until 7 p.m.)

7:00 (38) Hockey. The Bruins versus the New York Islanders.

8:00 (7) XFL Football. Necco candy-factory employees-of-the-month versus the Milton VFW.

11:00 (44) American High: You Only Live Once and Who Am I? A collective effort by director R.J. Cutler and a team of documentary filmmakers that follows the fortunes and misfortunes of high-school kids from their first freshman day to graduation. (Until midnight.)

Midnight (2) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Joan Osborne. (until 1 a.m.)

SUNDAY

Noon (7) Basketball. The New York Knicks versus the Miami Heat, followed by the Portland Trailblazers versus the Sacramento Kings, followed by the Los Angeles Lakers versus the Minnesota Timberwolves.

1:00 (25) Baseball. The Sox versus the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

6:30 (44) The American Experience: John Brown’s Holy War. Repeated from last week. Joe Morton narrates this study of half-madman/half-liberator Brown and his religious crusade against slavery. (Until 8 p.m.)

7:00 (5) The Ten Commandments (movie). A Passover/Palm Sunday treat. Charlton Heston as (an unarmed) Moses, Yul Brynner as a hairless Pharaoh, plus Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, and more. Never gets old. (Until 11:44 p.m.)

8:00 (7) The Pelican Brief (movie). In keeping with the post-Oscars Julia Roberts national love fest, we get Alan J. Pakula’s 1993 adaptation of John Grisham’s paranoid novel about a young law student who knows too much about the assassination of a pair of Supreme Court justices. With Denzel Washington as the reporter who protects her, plus Sam Shepard and John Heard. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Rhapsody in Blue (movie). Robert Alda stars as George Gershwin. From 1945 and co-starring Joan Leslie, Oscar Levant, and Alexis Smith. (Until 10:20 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Wives and Daughters, part two. The second installment of a four-part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s posthumously published novel about a woman and her stepsister, their rivalry for certain men, and the older generation that referees the battle — all set in small-town 19th-century England. Justine Waddell stars as heroine Molly Gibson; Francesca Annis plays her sneaky stepmom, Hyacinth; Keeley Hawes plays stepsis Cynthia; Tom Hollander plays " the enigmatic Osborne Hamley " ; Anthony Howell plays " his more red-blooded brother. " With Michael Gambon, Penelope Wilton, Ian Carmichael, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Barbara Flynn, and Deborah Findlay. 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) Jesus (movie) part one. A second Palm Sunday treat: Jeremy Sisto plays the Christ in this humanist TV-movie interpretation of the Gospels. How can it miss with Jacqueline Bisset as Mary? Not to mention Gary Oldman as Pontius Pilate and Debra Messing as that other Mary. To be concluded on Wednesday starting at 9 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:20 (44) Indie Select: Lucky, Dog Days, and Minotaur. Three shorts from the New England Film and Video Fest. " Lucky " is Olufunmilayo Gittens’s tale of elderly friendship; " Dog Days " has filmmaker Ellie Lee waxing allegorical about surburbanites who live through the final days of some future war; and " Minotaur " is Dan Sousa’s retelling of the myth from the Minotaur’s point of view. (Until 11:20 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Hide and Seek, part one. Repeated from Thursday at 9 p.m.

11:30 (2) On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying: Living with Dying, A Different Kind of Care, A Death of One’s Own, and A Time To Change. A series of four shows about the final curtain, presumably based on the idea that leaving life will be less unpleasant if we spend some of it pondering the inevitable. Show #1 watches as doctors weigh a patient’s wish to keep living against the cost of her care and the danger of her infecting others, then profiles a doctor with a terminal disease who decides that treatment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Edition #2 visits New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, where students train to prescribe pain medication to the terminally ill. The third show profiles a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease and then discusses Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act and what it offers a cancer victim. And (no pun intended) finally, Bill takes us to Alabama, where a doctor-nurse team are campaigning to introduce the idea of hospice care into the mainstream. (until 5:30 a.m.)

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Masterpiece Theatre: Wives and Daughters, part two. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

MONDAY

8:00 (5) Final Jeopardy (movie). Dana Delany and Billy Burke star in a new TV-movie from a novel by New York prosecutor Linda Fairstein about a New York prosecutor (specializing in sex crimes) who suspects her lover (and every other man in sight) of rape and murder. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) La Plaza: Getting to Fenway. Repeated from Saturday at 6:30 p.m.

9:30 (2) American Experience: Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. So that’s where he went. Richard Ben Cramer narrates this look at the darker side of Joltin’ Joe. Fortunately, amid all the bummer details about how DiMaggio’s perfectionism drove him to depression, self-doubt, and cynicism, we get to see him take a few swings. 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: Wives and Daughters, part two. Repeated from Sunday at 9 p.m.

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) American Experience: Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. Repeated from this evening at 9:30 p.m.

TUESDAY

8:00 (2) Scientific American Frontiers: Flying Free. Seems it was only yesterday that Paul MacCready built the first human-powered airplane. Well, that concept didn’t take off (okay, it did; but you know what we mean), but lots of his engineering firm’s other notions did — that undetectable spy plane you didn’t see when you looked up yesterday, for example. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Wednesday at midnight. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Nova: Survivor MD: Hearts and minds. More follow-up material about those Harvard Med School grads this documentary series has been following since their first bio lab. Where are they now? We find out about three of them tonight. One is a shrink training to be a psychoanalyst, another is a heart-transplant researcher, and another is an anesthesiologist. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 5 a.m. and on Thursday at midnight on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (25) Boot Camp. We think this is one of those reality shows where they abuse people. This, we’re told/warned, is a one-time only Tuesday edition. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Frontline: Medicating Kids. Ritalin, a wise man once noted, is the drug you give kids you don’t like. Well the facile fad for doping up kids (mostly boys) so they behave in school isn’t going away as more and more tots down daily doses of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and more. And all at the prompting of doctors, teachers, drug companies, and insurance companies. Okay, kids, listen up and catch this distinction. You know the D.A.R.E program? That isn’t the stuff they’re talking about when they tell you that you should take drugs to alter your mood or performance. Steroids bad; Prozac good. Marijuana illegal; Ritalin handed out like candy. Go figure. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Thursday at 4 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) Cats. The Cats stats provided tell us that this rather odd (but well costumed) adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s feline verses has been seen by 50 million people in 27 countries in 14 languages. This TV restaging is actually kinda remarkable and (for very brief periods) entertaining. And those costumes are wonderful. With Elaine Paige, John Mills, and Ken Page. (Until 3 a.m.)

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Scientific American Frontiers: Flying Free. Repeated from this evening at 8 p.m.

2:00 and 5:00 a.m. (44) Nova: Survivor MD: Hearts and Minds. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

3:00 a.m. (2) Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This, on the other hand, is just stupid. Music (of sorts) from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Starring Donny Osmond, Richard Attenborough and Joan Collins. (Until 5 a.m.)

3:00 a.m. (44) Frontline: Medicating Kids. They’re so cute when they’re stoned. Repeated from this evening at 10 p.m.

WEDNESDAY

8:00 (2) The Saints with Sister Wendy. Sis Wendy goes to Italy to follow the lives of the saints through art treasures. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Jewel. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Jesus Christ Superstar. More Biblical insults from Andy Lloyd Webber and Timmy Rice. Starring Glenn Carter and Jerome Pradon. (Until 11 p.m.)

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

9:00 (44) Sarah McLachlan: Mirrorball. McLachlan concert footage from 1998 (Portland, Oregon) featuring selections from her albums Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) American High: Who Am I? and Boogie Nights. Always with the same old soul-searching questions. More high-school documentary. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Scientific American Frontiers: Flying Free. Repeated from Tuesday at 8 p.m.

1:00 a.m. (2) American Experience: Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. Repeated from Monday at 9:30 p.m.

1:00 a.m. (44) Jesus Christ Superstar. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

2:30 a.m. (2) La Plaza: Getting to Fenway. Repeated from Saturday at 6:30 p.m.

THURSDAY

8:30 (2) Basic Black: Glass Ceiling. A look at African-American executives in the " new economy " and a discussion of how race influences executive advancement. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Second Sight 2: Hide and Seek, part two. Shouldn’t be that difficult to hide from Detective Tanner. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

Midnight (44) Nova: Survivor MD: Hearts and Minds. Repeated from Tuesday at 9 p.m.

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

3:00 a.m. (44) The Rodgers and Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty. One of each, we presume. Rodgers, before Hammerstein, worked with Lorenz Hart and created " My Funny Valentine, " " The Lady Is a Tramp, " and other memorable ditties. (Until 4 a.m.)

4:00 a.m. (2) Frontline: Medicating Kids. Repeated from Tuesday at 10 p.m.

Issue Date: April 5 - 12, 2001