TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: May 31
A select viewing guide for Thursday, May 31
REALITY Real Deal History, 10 p.m. For those viewers already hooked on programs like Pawn Stars and Storage Wars, settle in for your next TV addiction. Hailing from the U.S. History Channel, the unscripted series serves as an introduction service between professional buyers and sellers of antiques, collectables and various historical artifacts. The reason to watch stems from the remarkable range of items changing hands, most of which would not seem out of place at a garage sale but are still fantastically valuable to those buying and selling them. Watch tonight as the savvy pawnbroker Chip tries to strike a deal with a man selling his authentic thirties-era anesthesia machine and the career collector Jason dickers with a couple willing to part with a rare LP copy of The Last Waltz – which, in this case, has been signed by Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
DOCUMENTARY Secrets of Bin Laden’s Lair Discovery, 9 p.m. Even in his final days, Osama bin Laden was plotting new evil. First broadcast on the U.S. Discovery Channel, the special puts on public display the materials seized during the May 2, 2011, raid by U.S. Navy Seals on the infamous al-Qaeda leader’s secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As shown here for the first time, bin Laden’s lair was a veritable treasure trove of intelligence, including a dozen cellphones, five computers and hundreds of storage devices containing cryptic documents and video. The program documents the year-long effort by world-class intelligence analysts and linguists to decipher the materials. The highlights: bin Laden’s dictum to expand al-Qaeda operations in the U.S. and ordering the assassinations of CIA director David Petraeus and U.S. President Barack Obama. Chilling stuff.
DRAMA Touch Fox, 8 p.m. Eight seasons of 24 has certainly put Kiefer Sutherland in the good graces of the Fox Network. Despite mediocre ratings and a maddeningly complex plotline, this supernatural series starring Sutherland as the widower father of an autistic, possibly omniscient, 11-year-old boy was recently renewed for a second season. The story becomes even more complicated in tonight’s two-hour closer in which Sutherland’s character of Martin fends off the advances of the ominous Aster Corporation (formerly the Hanso Foundation?) that wants to study his son, Jake (David Mazouz). The closer also introduces Maria Bello – seen most recently on the ill-fated American remake of Prime Suspect – as a mother whose daughter shares the same abilities as Martin’s son.
MOVIE Dragonfly Vision, midnight Despite winning two Academy Awards (for directing and producing Dances with Wolves) and memorable acting turns in The Untouchables, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is probably more famous for several colossal flops – most notably Waterworld, The Postman and Mr. Brooks. Costner is rock-solid in this underappreciated 2002 drama in which he plays the emergency-room doctor Joe Darrow, whose pregnant physician wife Emily (Susanna Thompson) tragically dies on a humanitarian mission in the Amazon. Joe is understandably bereft, until he starts receiving messages from his dead spouse from clinically dead ER patients. The capable Linda Hunt – another Oscar winner, now on the TV series NCIS Los Angeles – plays a nun sympathetic to the widower’s situation.