TV: Five shows worth watching tonight : June 16
Critical picks for Thursday night's television line-up
REALITY House Hunters International HGTV, 7 p.m. If this popular series has taught us anything, it's that everyone has a different version of what constitutes a weekend getaway. Tonight's episode introduces viewers to a successful British musician named Sam, who is clearly enamoured of his life in Leeds, but also wants to purchase a second home that reminds him of the English countryside of his youth. Solution: rural Bulgaria, where the scenery is stunning and the houses are cheap. With girlfriend Lauren in tow, Sam tours several homes in hopes of finding his perfect getaway spot.
COMEDY Community NBC, CITY-TV, 8 p.m. Thank heavens NBC renewed this program for a third season. Although low-key and low-rated, Community has precisely the type of fandom that would have harassed the network (and TV critics) incessantly had the show been cancelled. From last season, tonight's episode guest-stars the pop-star Hilary Duff as Meghan, the head of a group of mean girls who bond with Abed (Danny Pudi). Elsewhere, the painfully vain Pierce (Chevy Chase) decides to go for a bounce on a trampoline. Guess how that turns out.
REALITY Mythbusters Discovery, 10 p.m. True or false: Does bubbly water allow a person to stay afloat longer? Professional handymen Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman put the theory to the test by placing a giant bubble machine in the pool, with Adam volunteering to act as a human barometer. In the same show, they reveal whether an arrow packed with dynamite can split a tree in two, as it once did on the TV series MacGyver. Who says television isn't educational?
MOVIE Mars Needs Women TCM, 12:30 a.m. ET; 9:30 p.m. PT Hailing from the American International Pictures studio, this 1966 feature is a study in low-budget filmmaking. Filmed over a two-week period in Texas, the film stars sixties teen heartthrob Tommy Kirk as Dop, one of five Martians shipped to Earth to procure women (turns out there are no nurturing females on the angry red planet). In short order, the group locates and entrances a stewardess, a homecoming queen, a painter and a stripper, while Dop falls for the bookish but sexy scientist Dr. Bolen, played by Yvonne Craig of Batman renown.