TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: March 20
A select viewing guide for Wednesday, March 20
REALITY My Strange Addiction (TLC, 7 and 10 p.m.) It’s official: TLC now has the most unsettling show on primetime television. Now in its fourth season, this docu-series focuses on people who relieve their anxieties or simply take great pleasure in the consumption of non-food items or bizarre ritualistic behaviour. Cases in point: In tonight’s rebroadcast episode at 7 p.m., we meet a chap named Julius who admits he’s sexually attracted to balloons and keeps more than 50,000 inflated in his home at all times. Tonight’s new episode (10 p.m.) profiles Michelle, who claims that she’s been drinking blood for more than 15 years! For the record, Michelle consumes both human blook (her own) and pig blood.
COMEDY The Ron James Show (CBC, 8:30 p.m.) The fine homegrown tradition of broad sketch comedy is alive and well in this popular CBC series. Give the credit to Ron James, who opens each show with one of his patented quick-talking monologues and then quickly shifts into a series of themed skits. Tonight’s theme is “consumerism,” which leads to Ronnie playing a man willing to sell his soul to the devil to get the latest iPhone. Canadian comedy veteran Kevin McDonald reprises his Satan persona from the old Kids in the Hall series.
DRAMA Criminal Minds (CBS, 9 p.m.) If you’re the type of person who spends hours on Facebook and Twitter each day, watch tonight’s new outing of this creepy crime procedural series, now in its eighth season. In the epsidoe, Behavioural Analysis Unit boss David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and his team look into a series of murder victims who were documenting their personal lives and desires via blog posts and social media. At the same time, BAU tech analyst Kevin (Nicholas Brendon) sees red when he learns that his co-worker and ex-girlfriend Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) has a new love interest. Dude, get over it.
REALITY The Millionaire Matchmaker (Slice, 10 p.m.) Bless her heart, Patti Stanger still believes everybody has a soulmate out there. The indomitable L.A.-based professional matchmaker remains the entire reason to watch this popular reality series, which returns tonight for its sixth season. The opener introduces two bachelors looking for a love connection: Daniel is a brash Canadian making his living as a professional poker player; Brian Holloway II is a trust-fund kid slowly burning through the family fortune. In both cases, Patti makes the two bachelors realize that neither one is going to marry Kate Upton.
MOVIE 2010 (TCM, 10 p.m. ET; 7 p.m. PT) Film critics and cineastes still fawn over Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1968 sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, but what about the sequel? Released in 1984, this followup film was also based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and stars Roy Scheider as the astronaut Heywood Floyd, who heads up a joint U.S.-Soviet space mission to discover what happened to the missing spaceship from the first movie. His crew includes American fly-guys Curnow (John Lithgow) and Chandra (Bob Balaban) and the cool Russian cosmonaut Tanya, played by Helen Mirren with a nifty perm. Against all probable odds, the mission actually catches up with 2001 spaceman Dave (Keir Dullea), still orbiting lazily around Jupiter.