FOX (Mondays, 9 p.m. ET)
Michael Scofield's brother has been convicted of murdering the vice president's brother and soon will be skipping down death row. Scofield, a structural engineer, is convinced his brother was set up. (By whom?) He robs a bank, fully intending to get caught—he stands there, righteously tall, as if it were curtain call at Rent—and so goes off to Fox River State Penitentiary, planning to bust out his brother. He's sure he'll pull it off. After all, his firm worked on the prison's design. And he smuggles in the blueprints using considerable ingenuity and what I would describe (for the sake of preserving a nice twist) as go-for-broke panache.
This is an entertaining, big-narrative concept. Victor Hugo certainly would have thought twice before using it to line his parakeet cage. Like 24, the story will work itself out throughout the season, which means initial weaknesses should be indulged for a few more episodes. (For one thing, wouldn't the authorities notice they had two brothers under lock and key? And why does Stacy Keach, as the prison warden, have a toothpick model of the Taj Mahal in his office? It's bad decor, cheap symbolism and an aesthetic crime.) But the plot lines are tantalizing—federal agents are scampering about on the outside, employing extreme prejudice to make sure the death sentence is carried out. And the two-hour opener (which airs at 8 p.m. ET) ends with a jolt that forces Wentworth Miller, as Scofield, to drop his look of smug invincibility.
DOCUMENTARY
TCM (Sept. 6, 8 p.m. ET)
Fifteen years have passed since Greta Garbo died at age 84—long after she'd become a reclusive figure stalking around Manhattan like a restless old stork—and it's been more than 60 years since she made her last movie. But her strong, angular beauty—handsomeness, actually—and her acting remain miraculously fresh. If she could be restored to life, she would still have a home in films. Only maybe not Wedding Crashers.
This 90-minute documentary glides swanlike across the Swedish-born actress's career. It's a showcase of gorgeous black-and-white clips with sympathetic commentary from relatives, biographers, historians and friends like Gore Vidal, who discusses how the star's androgynous power could stir and unsettle audiences. "Men hated her," he says. "She was too grand and too elegant for Joe Six Pack. Though his wife quite liked her."
REALITY
Court TV (Sundays, 10 p.m. ET)
What in the name of Kojak have we here? Parco, a mix of reality and faux-reality that sits on the plate with the dull heaviness of cold rations of ravioli and gnocchi, stars a real-life Manhattan private investigator, shiny-domed Vinny Parco. He reenacts actual cases with the help of his family, which includes twin sons Chris and Vinny Jr., and a stable of Charlie's Angel-like babes who serve as investigators and eye candy.
In the premiere half hour, Parco helps a guy recover some dough he says some other guy owes him. This other guy claimed in court he didn't have any dough, only now he's living it up all over town. When Parco learns that Mr. High Life likes to entertain aboard a yacht, he tells one of his girls, named Mam: "Get the boat registration—should be on the back of the boat."
It's not exactly noir.
CRIME NEWS
CNN Headline News (Weekdays, 8 p.m. ET)
Grace, a former prosecutor and Court TV commentator, has been a ratings hit at the helm of her own hour-long show. And why not? She's thumpingly original.
Grace has a vivid backstory—she became a lawyer after her fiancé was murdered—and commands the camera with the outsize aggressiveness of an actress charging through a big courtroom scene. She has large cat eyes that glare out as if scanning for fugitives who might be hiding under your living-room furniture, and she uses her flat Georgia accent to make even blunter her skeptical questioning of anyone she suspects of impeding justice. She has been especially rigorous (and emotional) in the case of Natalee Holloway, the teenager gone missing in Aruba, but she pretty much gets worked up over everything.
The persona is almost too strong to fit within this format. Grace needs something of wider scope: If she were let loose in the Harry Potter saga, she'd have hounded the Dark Lord into handing himself over by the third book.
Entourage (HBO, Sept. 4, 10 p.m. ET)
It's the end of season 2, which deserves to be remembered for Jeremy Piven's Emmy-nominated turn as agent Ah Gold.
Soundstage: Chris Isaak (PBS, check listings)
The retro-cool pop singer with the amazing hair croons in concert.
Rome: Engineering an Empire (The History Channel, Sept. 5, 9 p.m. ET)
So it really wasn't built in a day? This mind-enriching documentary is not to be confused with the libidinous new HBO series.
Strong Medicine (Lifetime, Aug. 28, 9 p.m. ET)
Scrubs' Judy Reyes guest stars as a mother accused of poisoning her own child.
Tommy Lee Goes to College (NBC, Aug. 30, 9 p.m. ET)
This time out, the delightfully dim rocker turned student pledges a frat, and even thinks of starting his own. Sigma Delta Motley, right, dude?
My Farewell to...
Here's one love note for TV's most misunderstood show: "Train wreck" is the term I've often heard used to describe Lisa Kudrow's HBO series, heading for its first-season finale Sept. 4. Wrong! A bitter comedy about a former sitcom star trying for a double comeback (a reality show piggy-backed onto a new sitcom), this is no train wreck: It's a brilliant high-wire act. Valerie Cherish is an actress of wobbly standing (career highs include a People's Choice Award and having a monkey poop on her head on Leno) inching her way along without plunging into...what lower depths? Game shows don't really exist anymore. It's a tribute to Kudrow's skill, her nervous, fine-honed twittering, that the fate of an utterly trite star can have been so suspensefully desperate through these weeks.
Not much has gone according to plan for Valerie: Her sitcom character has been reduced to a Mrs. Roper monstrosity in a jogging suit, she's treated with slovenly contempt by one of the show's writers, and it's clear her comeback lags behind the arrival of the sitcom's new star, a blonde cutie named Juna. Valerie, with cloying maternal sweetness, insists on calling her "baby girl."
This is acid Hollywood satire, Day of the Locust trickled down to modern TV. I hope it comes back.
>LOST: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (7 discs, $59.99)
Series:
Forty-eight survivors of a plane crash are stranded on a creepy island. Do it wrong, and it's Gilligan's Island redux. Do it right, and you've got last season's most engrossing series, which demands a repeat viewing to digest its ever-twisting storyline.
Extras: Rollicking commentaries and documentaries yield juicy behind-the-scenes info, but alas, no new clues about Lost's big mysteries.
THE COSBY SHOW: SEASON 1 (4 discs, $49.99)
Series:
Twenty-one years after Bill Cosby's groundbreaking sitcom began its eight-year run on NBC, the laughter generated by the adventures of the Huxtables—a prospering black family—is still contagious.
Extras: A sugary retrospective special that aired on NBC in 2002.
- Contributors:
- TOM GLIATTO,
- JASON LYNCH,
- AMY BONAWITZ.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
