SUNDAY, FEB. 3
HOUSE
POST-SUPER BOWL | FOX
Mira Sorvino guest stars as a sick psychiatrist stuck at the South Pole. Help is on its way—but not until after the Patriots and Giants finish their fight.
MONDAY, FEB. 4
THE NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE
9:30 P.M. | CBS
Season 2 of Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus's wry, charming sitcom.
PLEASURE FOR SALE
11 P.M. | SUNDANCE
Six-part documentary series about a licensed Nevada brothel. Bristling with anxieties, the women make for vivid portraits.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6
AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2
TIMES MAY VARY | PBS
Chris Rock and Don Cheadle learn about their ancestry. First of two parts.
THURSDAY, FEB. 7
NI HAO, KAI-LAN
11 A.M. | NICK JR.
Cute little cartoon that teaches Mandarin Chinese phrases to kids 2 to 5. "Ni hao"? Hello.
SURVIVOR: MICRONESIA—FANS VS. FAVORITES
8 P.M. | CBS
Good luck, and don't end up like Richard Hatch.
FRIDAY, FEB. 8
ESCAPE TO CHIMP EDEN
9:30 P.M. | ANIMAL PLANET
Human-traumatized chimps in a South African sanctuary prepare for the wild with the help of Eugene Cussons.
Lipstick Jungle
NBC, Feb. 7, 10 p.m. ET |
COMEDY-DRAMA
Darren Star, creator of Sex and the City, recently flounced up ABC's schedule with Cashmere Mafia, a gauzy drama exploring the grand themes of love, career and fashion in New York City. Here's NBC's ladies-of-Manhattan project, based on a novel by Sex writer Candace Bushnell. Brooke Shields plays a movie executive who reluctantly neglects family while hustling to sign Leo DiCaprio for a film about Galileo (the astronomer, not some Italian designer), Kim Raver is a magazine editor trying to outpace a slick rival, and Lindsay Price is a designer whose new line looks to be a disaster. The differences between Jungle and Mafia are mostly cosmetic, a matter of production style, but cosmetics count. Cashmere is glamorously flimsy, a tent in Bryant Park. Jungle has a fatigued drabness: It's a subway-concourse shoe store. In the first episodes, the only fun is provided by Lorraine Bracco in the small role of a powerful book editor. She's vulgar, with helmet hair, and her energy is invaluable.
Welcome to the Captain
CBS, Feb. 4, 8:30 p.m. ET |
COMEDY
Josh (Fran Kranz), a struggling young filmmaker, moves into a famous old Hollywood apartment building called the Captain. Therein dwells a sitcom-y coterie of charming eccentrics, including a former Three's Company writer (Jeffrey Tambor) who serves as a sort of goodwill ambassador for the place, as well as a formidable sex kitten (Raquel Welch) who has lived through a fair percentage of her nine lives. The show is affable but limp, lacking any real satiric sinew, although Chris Klein, as an accountant, races through the scenery barking his lines. I wish the tenants all turned out to be members of some religious cult of celebrity C-listers who are secretly intent on recruiting Josh.
Bernard and Doris
HBO, Feb. 9, 8 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes star in this wispily tender biographical film. It's about the unlikely friendship between aging tobacco heiress Doris Duke and her butler. A gay, ponytailed, alcoholic Irishman named Bernard Lafferty, he was left millions in her will but outlived her by only a few years. Despite the occasional whiff of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the movie is very quietly and often sweetly acted. Maybe too sweetly. Everyone seems to be under the impression this is Driving Miss Daisy without the car and with a good deal more booze.
FOX's hit new reality show puts contestants in the hot seat, grilling them with intrusive questions and testing their responses with a lie detector.
HOW DOES A LIE DETECTOR WORK? A polygraph monitors changes in the body—heart rate, sweatiness—as a person is asked and answers questions. Does a change necessarily equal a fib? No. "It isn't a lie detector, it's a monitoring device," stresses Thomas P. Mauriello, a criminology expert at the University of Maryland. "A reaction doesn't mean anybody's lying." Which is why polygraph results aren't admissible in court. But as a game, says host Mark L. Walberg, "it's fun."
CAN IT BE FOOLED? Beta-blocker drugs can "dampen the physiological response," says Mauriello. "But then you don't respond to anything."
WHAT WON'T THE SHOW ASK? No questions "where a minor can be affected," says creator Howard Schultz. For example, a divorcé won't be asked: "Have you used your child as a pawn to get back at your ex?"
IS THERE EMOTIONAL DAMAGE? "I haven't seen anything like a Jerry Springer moment," says Walberg, although contestants meet with counselors afterward. Ty Keck, a physical trainer and the show's first contestant, says he felt "about a thousand pounds lighter" afterward. His regret: "We didn't walk away with any money."
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!
