A select viewing guide to the next seven days of television
MONDAY FEBRUARY 10 Antiques Roadshow (PBS, 8 p.m.) If you can’t comprehend the complexities of the luge or you’re simply unable to bear another minute of the Winter Olympics, why not take a break by watching people haul their old junk in for a free TV appraisal? And the best part is some of that old junk is worth a fortune. Tonight, host Mark Walberg (no, not that Mark Wahlberg) and the Roadshow team roll into beautiful downtown Detroit, where the appraisers ponder the value of an original Charles Schulz drawing of Linus and handwritten letters penned by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. It beats the heck out of the biathlon.
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 11 American Experience: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (PBS, 9 p.m.) Back in 1969, the biopic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid collected four Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Song for that incredibly sappy Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head. Paul Newman and Robert Redford played the titular outlaws, and the portrayal couldn’t have been further from the truth. This exhaustive profile tracks the lives of Butch and Sundance, known to their pals as Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. Back in the 1890s, the bank-robbing duo pulled off the longest string of successful holdups in history. They also stymied the detective force of Pinkertons and coverage of their daring robberies were chronicled on the front pages of newspapers all over America. Meet the original gangstas.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 12 Food Network, 10 p.m. (Feb. 12) Buy This Restaurant Only the terribly foolish or very brave dare venture into the restaurant business. This earnest new unscripted series profiles restaurateur novices as they dive headlong into the thankless process of opening their own eatery. The opener introduces viewers to Kelly, a pleasant young widow who wants to open a small café where people can gather and chill. The tricky part: Kelly has to choose between three existing restaurants in her hometown of Minneapolis, all the while wondering: If those locations are so great, why are they selling?
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13 The Fashion Fund (GameTV, 8 p.m.) Strike a pose, and be careful that Anna Wintour doesn’t bite your head off. The artistic director and sharpish Vogue editor-in-chief (she was the inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada) is the reason to watch this documentary series chronicling the annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund competition. Booked for a six-episode run, the show was filmed at last year’s showdown and focuses on ten aspiring designers. Unlike most reality shows, the format bypasses the usual challenges and instead trains on the neophytes trying to get their grandiose designs approved by the famously imperious Ms. Wintour, as well as the likes of Diane von Furstenberg, J. Crew president Jenna Lyons and other style major domos. For fashion fans, it is to die for.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 14 Marty (TCM, 10:15 p.m.) If you’re a unattached single guy this Valentine’s Day and you want to feel even worse, or maybe better, watch this 1955 drama that earned a Best Actor Oscar for the late, great Ernest Borgnine. The big guy is all heart as a lonely Bronx bachelor who seems forever doomed to live with his old Italian mother. Marty gets his chance when he meets a nice girl named Clara (Betsy Blair), but all his bonehead buddies razz him about her being too “plain,” so he dumps her. The screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky still hits the mark.
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 15 48 Hours Presents: The Whole Gritty City (CBS, CHCH, 9 p.m.) If you want to see the real heart of America, you won’t find it watching rich white kids schussing and swooping down hills in NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics, but you will see it on display in this fine documentary. The film follows the members of three different New Orleans marching bands as they prepare to march in the city’s annual Mardi Gras parade. Filmed over a three-year period, the doc, which had a brief recent theatrical run, shows the personal setbacks and remarkable tenacity of the young musicians. If you PVR only one film this weekend, make it this one.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 16 90 Day Fiance (TLC, 10 p.m.) Everybody talks about mail-order brides, but who’s doing the ordering? TLC keeps its bizarre reality string intact with this new series delving into the heretofore-undocumented world of international dating and, oh my, matrimony. Tonight’s opener explains the unique 90-day fiancé visa, which enables women from other countries to travel to the U.S. in order to live with their ‘fiance’ (who ordered them off a website catalogue). The show attempts to inject some romance into documenting the courtships of four couples, a la The Bachelor, but mostly it’s about four average-looking guys trying to appear nonchalant with women clearly out of their league.