by Clif Garboden

THURSDAY

7:30 (2) Basic Black: Conversations with John Edgar Wideman. Darren Duarte talks with UMass prof, Rhodes scholar, and novelist Wideman about how he escaped poverty in Pittsburgh. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Local News: Grace Under Pressure. The story of North Carolina’s WCNC and its efforts to upgrade its news department continues with the unveiling of a new format and technical difficulties beyond their imagination. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (25) Baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks versus the New York Yankees in World Series game #5 — if necessary.

9:00 (2) Frontline: Ambush in Mogadishu. An updated edition of a 1998 Frontline report on the ambush of Army Rangers in Somalia by troops under the command of warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. Those same US outfits are now in Afghanistan chasing the guy who, evidence suggests, may have trained their ambushers, Osama bin Laden. To be repeated tonight at 12:30 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: Mrs. Bradley Mysteries: Speedy Death. Diana Rigg herself plays feisty detective Adela Bradley in this adaptation of a 1929 yarn by Gladys Mitchell. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (44) 1900 House: The Time Machine. This Brit reality show, which moved a modern couple back into a world of Victorian inconveniences, was a dud, but the first installment, covering the restoration of the house, is fun. To be repeated on Sunday at 6 p.m. on Channel 2. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY

10:00 (2) Life 360: Roots. Genealogists are boring. They just want to know who married who. But some personal odysseys can be compelling — for example, a group of African-Americans who revisit slave depots in Africa and an Alaskan woman who discovers her ancestors of color in New Orleans. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Patty Loveless and the Del McCoury Band. (Until 11 p.m.)

SATURDAY

2:30 (7) Football. Notre Dame versus Tennessee.

6:00 (7) Basketball. The Philadelphia 76ers versus the Washington Wizards.

8:00 (25) Baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks versus the New York Yankees in World Series game #6 — if necessary.

8:00 (44) American Masters: Vaudeville. Repeated from last week. An overview of a lost entertainment genre. And it is so all about the banana man. To be repeated on Sunday at noon on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (7) National Lampoon’s Vacation (movie). The first (1983) Lampoon vacation comedy, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo chasing the American nightmare along the Interstates. With Imogene Coca as Aunt Edna. (Until 11 p.m.)

SUNDAY

Noon (44) American Masters: Vaudeville. Repeated from Saturday at 8 p.m.

1:00 (4) Football. The Pats versus the Atlanta Falcons, followed by the Indianapolis Colts versus the Buffalo Bills.

3:00 (2) A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. It’s about time someone suggested this. Ben Kingsley narrates a history of peaceful victories from Gandhi through Martin Luther King to the overthrow of Pinochet. (Until 6 p.m.)

4:00 (25) Football. The Philadelphia Eagles versus the Arizona Cardinals.

6:00 (2) 1900 House: The Time Machine. Repeated from Thursday at 10:30 p.m.

7:00 (2) The Buffalo War. Native Americans, ranchers, and environmentalists clash in Montana over the impending extinction of the state’s last wild bison herd. (Until 8 p.m.)

7:00 (5) Toy Story 2 (movie). Not your average sequel — it doesn’t suck. Voiced by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Kelsey Grammer, and John Cossack. That’s Sarah MacLachlan singing Randy Newman’s song. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (25) Baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks versus the New York Yankees in World Series game #7 — if necessary.

8:00 (44) The Maltese Falcon (movie). But, you protest, it doesn’t make any sense. True, but the atmospherics and characters are great. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sydney "The Fat Man" Greenstreet star in this 1941 John Huston film from Dashiell Hammett’s novel. (Until 9:45 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (movie). Not so very different from what’s in her autobiographical Little House books. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7) Uprising (movie), part one. Hank Azaria stars in a BIFTVM (based-in-fact TV-movie) about a 1943 revolt against the Nazis by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. To be concluded on Monday starting at 9 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:45 (44) The Asphalt Jungle (movie). Sterling Hayden and Marilyn Monroe star in this 1950 noir about a burglary gone wrong. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

MONDAY

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Cazalets, part three. While all the women in the extended Cazalet clan are busy bearing children, as usual, Rupert vanishes at Dunkirk and the family sawmill is blitzed. Not a lot to this elaborate soaper, but high marks for period authenticity. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Tuesday at 1 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Football. The Denver Broncos versus the Oakland Raiders.

9:00 (7) Uprising (movie), part two. The conclusion. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:30 (2) American Roots Music: This Land Is Your Land. And these airwaves belong to whoever can buy a transmitter. This edition covers the popularization of folk, blues, etc. through mass musical media. To be repeated on Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

1:00 and 4:00 a.m. (44) Masterpiece Theatre: The Cazalets, part three. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

TUESDAY

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Poetic License. Profiling street-life poet Manazar Gamboa, who spent 17 years off the streets, in prison for armed robbery. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Garden of Eden. You’ve heard of the Seychelles; you just can’t spell them, pronounce them, or point to them on a map. They’re islands (way) off the Kenya coast and home to a 150,000-shell giant-tortoise colony. To be repeated tonight at 2 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Nova: Russia’s Nuclear Warriors. Remember all those Soviet missiles that used to be aimed right at us? Where are they now and who’s got his finger on the button? Journalist Vladimir Pozner shocks us with the answer. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Scientific American Frontiers: Alien Invasion. Everything from viruses to spores to terrorists crosses international borders pretty easily these days, with the result that a lot of destructive flora and fauna set up housekeeping where they don’t belong. To be repeated on Wednesday at 2 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Cazalets, part three. Repeated from Monday at 9 p.m.

WEDNESDAY

8:00 (4) The 35th Annual Country Music Awards. No Dixie Chicks? We’re boycotting. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) American Roots Music: This Land Is Your Land. Repeated from Monday at 10:30 p.m.

9:00 (2) Warship: Sea Power and Big Guns. No new ground here, but implements-of-destruction fans will certainly enjoy this chronicle of ocean-going fighters from wooden-hulled days to the present. Tonight (first two of four) installments brings us up to the Civil War ironclads. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Thursday at 1 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Indie Select: Who’s the Caboose? A spoof of the Hollywood moviemaking machine — in mockumentary form — from filmmakers Sam Seder and Charles Fisher. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (44) Lost Bird of Wounded Knee. On December 29, 1890, members of our armed forces, waving the same flag you see flying from pick-up trucks today (minus eight stars), massacred 300 largely unarmed Sioux of all ages and genders on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek in the Pine Ridge Reservation in the Dakotas. This show tells the true story of a little girl who survived, was adopted by a rich white family, and lived a life of exploited misery because of her race. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (44) Warship: Sea Power and Big Guns. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.

2:00 a.m. (2) Scientific American Frontiers: Alien Invasion. Repeated from Tuesday at 9 p.m.

THURSDAY

7:30 (2) Basic Black: Walter Mosley. A talk with the novelist about his latest, Walkin’ the Dog. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Local News: There’s No Place like Home. The final installment of this chronicle of a TV station’s scramble to improve its news ratings has the anchors and other victims of the upgrade reflecting (positively) on the changes they’ve endured to sell their efforts. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Antiques Roadshow UK: Glamis Castle. Just south of Birnam Wood, a few mountainous blocks from Cawdor. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: Gunning for Saddam. Who sent that anthrax? Some, including Clinton’s CIA guy James Woolsey, say such assaults (plus the first WTC bombing and other terrorist activities) can be traced back to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and are lobbying to unseat him in the next round of the war of terrorism. Others caution that doing so would destabilize Saudi Arabia and turn some of our "allies" against us. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Frontline: Saving Elián. Revisiting the tempest over sending Elián González home to Cuba and what the whole mess meant to Miami’s Cuban-American community. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) Warship: Sea Power and Big Guns. Repeated from Wednesday at 9 p.m.

The 525th line. If you think race relations are a problem now, you should have been here in 1968. The assassination of Martin Luther King against the backdrop of a pointless war that drafted a disproportionate number of African-Americans and siphoned public and private money away from the already decaying inner cities made all bad things worse. So the responsible thing to do, if you were a broadcaster, was to put together a public-affairs show devoted to black issues. The commercial affiliates — in those days more inclined to produce their own programming anyway — stepped up to the plate and created well-meant but limply enthusiastic chat shows that played to audiences of the guests’ relatives from the Sunday-morning public-service ghetto. Those shows were quickly declared transparent exercises in tokenism — another place to interview black cops (which were indeed something of a novelty in ’68). WGBH — in those days more inclined to produce local programming anyway — did better with the weekly African-American affairs/culture show Say, Brother, whose very name (recently updated to Basic Black) bespoke its era. Some editions were better than others, some were great — and, in their own way, all are historically significant. Which is why it’s good news that 215 Say, Brother episodes covering 1968 through 1982 have been filed (in modern storage format) for preservation by the WGBH Media Archives and Preservation Center. But you can relive some series highlights without rummaging through the physical archive by rummaging through the on-line archive of QuickTime (yes, another upgrade is required) clips at http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/saybrother/. It’s very cool to see Muhammad Ali (interviewed in 1977), Louis Farrakhan, Maya Angelou, Odetta, and Stokely Carmichael. The best thing about Say, Brother was that it didn’t shun the reality that black politics was confrontational or that black culture could exist without white support. So we have something rare here — a television Web site that’s fun and important.

Issue Date: November 1 - 8, 2001