Hot Premieres! CBS' "Swingtown," NBC's "Fear Itself," USA's "In Plain Sight" and More TiVoWorthy TV for the Week of June 1

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Cover image for  article: Hot Premieres! CBS' "Swingtown," NBC's "Fear Itself," USA's "In Plain Sight" and More TiVoWorthy TV for the Week of June 1

 
SATURDAY, MARCH 31
 
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Chiller, 5 p.m. ET)
Chiller will pay tribute to director and actor Sydney Pollack, who passed away last week, with a special presentation of two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that he directed in 1962 and 1963: The Black Curtain (at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.) and Diagnosis: Danger (at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.).
 
CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights (CBS, 9 p.m. ET)
Live. The first in a series of EliteXC live Saturday night fights on CBS will be televised tonight, marking the first live mixed martial arts primetime network event in broadcast history. There will be five matchups in total. Gus Johnson is the play-by-play announcer, Frank Shamrock and Mauro Ranallo will provide analysis and Karyn Bryant will report from cage-side at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.
 
Origins: Miranda Lambert (GAC, 9 p.m. ET)
Premiere. ACM Album of the Year winner and Nashville Star alumnus Miranda Lambert conducts a tour of her hometown Lindale, Texas, and introduces viewers to her family and friends in this special, which also includes a performance by Lambert and her boyfriend Blake Shelton at the first annual Miranda Lambert Cause for the Paws, a charity event benefiting the local Humane Society. Lambert will also perform her hits Famous in a Small Town, Desperation, Kerosene, New Strings and Storms Never Last.
 
Heatstroke (Sci Fi Channel, 9 p.m. ET)
Premiere. There are aliens among us – and, according to this movie, they are causing the global warming for which environmentalists insist humans are responsible. The crazy doesn’t stop there: It falls to a former model (Danica McKellar) and an elite commando (D.B. Sweeney) to stop them.
 
Robin Hood (BBC America, 9 p.m. ET)
A traitor in his gang causes all kinds of problems for Robin, including the failure of his plan to capture the Sheriff’s spy, Henry of Lewes, and growing resentment among Robin’s men, who feel that he no longer trusts any of them. Also, a wise woman named Matilda, who works for the Sheriff, offers to help Robin if he will take care of her pregnant daughter – but when the Sheriff learns of her betrayal Matilda is tried for witchcraft, and only Robin can save her. Jonas Armstrong stars.
 
 
 
SUNDAY, JUNE 1
 
Next GAC Star (GAC, 5 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. Since May 1, GAC has been inviting aspiring country music stars to upload videos, mp3s and photos at gactv.com/star and asking viewers to go online and vote for their favorites. There are many weeks left to this competition: Interested amateurs can continue to upload material through July 14, at which time celebrity judges will begin choosing their favorites and the public will vote on their choices. It all ends with a two-part television special featuring the six finalists on September 3 and 10. Tonight’s special showcases the best and most memorable video entries to date. Mike Siegel is the host.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (G4, 5 p.m. ET)
Premiere. This acclaimed 2007 documentary speaks directly to the core of G4’s targeted audience. It follows two men – a middle school science teacher and a hot sauce mogul -- in their quest to achieve the world’s highest score on the arcade classic, Donkey Kong.

Code Monkeys (G4, 7 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. The rowdy staffers at the videogame company GameAvision embark on more misadventures (each of them a parody of 1980s popular culture) as Season 2 of G4’s animated comedy series begins. Here’s a sneak preview of an upcoming episode, Sweater Puppies.

2008 MTV Movie Awards: Coming Attractions (MTV, 7:30 p.m. ET)
Live. Tim Kash and Kim Stolz will interview the honorees, nominees, performers and presenters as they walk the gold carpet heading into tonight’s MTV Movie Awards extravaganza.

Red Carpet Report with Christian Siriano (mtv.com, 7:30 p.m. ET)
Live. While Tim Kash and Kim Stolz handle the gold carpet arrivals at the MTV Movie Awards for the network, Project Runway 4 winner Christian Siriano will present special fashion coverage at mtv.com.

2008 MTV Movie Awards (MTV, 8 p.m. ET)
Live. Mike Myers is the host and Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Rainn Wilson, Ben Stiller, Sarah Jessica Parker, Will Ferrell, Lindsay Lohan, Steve Carell, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Seth Rogen, Jennifer Hudson, Anne Hathaway, James Franco, Brendan Fraser, Katharine McPhee and Rumer Willis are among the scheduled presenters at this year’s MTV Movie Awards. Coldplay and The Pussycat Dolls will perform, and Adam Sandler will receive the coveted MTV Generation Award – just in time for the release of his new movie, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Watch for the Best Movie Spoof Award, which will be presented to the person or persons who submitted the best homemade entry online (through MTV’s wide-ranging partnership with MySpace, Daily Motion, Break, Buzznet, FunnyorDie and other sites.) Telecast live from the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, CA.

Million Dollar Password (CBS, 8 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. Given the track record of host Regis Philbin, who had two summer smashes in ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and NBC’s America’s Got Talent, expect big things from his latest effort, a very modern update of the classic television game show Password. Unlike the first version, in which players competed for a few hundred dollars tops, here they can win as much as $1 million. The format is the same: Contestants team with celebrities to give and receive clues and guess the secret word. Neil Patrick Harris and Rachael Ray are on hand for tonight’s premiere.

Stonehenge Decoded (National Geographic Channel, 9 p.m. ET)
Premiere. This isn’t just another documentary about the legendary circular structure in the English county of Wiltshire that has fascinated millions of people for thousands of years. It reveals new information about a 4,500-year-old Stone Age settlement that stood just a few miles from Stonehenge, which included more than 300 houses and had at its center a mysterious second circle – a near replica of the one we all know well, carved out of wood. As he explains on the program, British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson believes, “[Stonehenge] is not just a stone circle and that’s all there is to it. It’s actually part of something much bigger. The building project for Stonehenge was just one element of a greater design.” Donald Sutherland is the narrator.

Nigel Tufnel of This is Spinal Tap Talks about Stonehenge (StonehengeDecoded.com)
Christopher Guest re-creates his classic role of rock star Nigel Tufnel from the 1984 cult classic This is Spinal Tap for this five-part online interview in which he shares his views about the origin of one of the most iconic structures in the world, Stonehenge. (It was an obsession of his in the movie.) Tufnel also allows a camera into his garage, where he conducts secret experiments intended to reveal the true purpose of Stonehenge. Yes, this is a good-natured publicity stunt for tonight’s premiere of the National Geographic Channel documentary Stonehenge Decoded.

In Plain Sight (USA Network, 10 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. USA’s new series set against the highly secretive United States Federal Witness Protection Program is a wonderful addition to the network’s roster of scripted series, which includes Monk, Psych and Burn Notice, all of them somewhat traditional hour dramas (and I mean that in the best possible way) laced with elements of comedy. (Think of the James Garner classic The Rockford Files, a fine show against which to be compared.) Mary McCormack (The West Wing) stars as Mary Shannon, a scrappy, tough-talking U.S. Marshal charged with protecting federal witnesses – some of them career criminals, some of them innocent people who had the misfortune of witnessing a crime, all of them the target of someone who wants them dead – who struggles to keep the true nature of her job secret from her family and friends for their own protection. Frederick Weller plays her equally unflappable partner, U.S. Marshal Marshall Mann. Lesley Anne Warren (Victor/Victoria) co-stars as Mary’s loopy and often unemployed mother, Jinx; Nichole Hiltz plays her flighty sister Brandi, and recent Dancing With the Stars finalist Cristian de la Fuente plays her on-again, off-again lover, Raphael. In Plain Sight is filmed entirely on location in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can get psyched for Sight by playing Marshall’s Minutia.

 

MONDAY, JUNE 2

SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon, 5 p.m. ET)
Nickelodeon this week will debut a new episode of SpongeBob SquarePants every day at 5 p.m. In today’s premiere, The Splinter, SpongeBob gets a splinter while working at the Krusty Krab and is desperate to get it out before Mr. Krabs forces him to go home early.

 
Tribute to Sydney Pollack (TCM, 8 p.m. ET)
TCM tonight will run four classic movies directed by actor and director Sydney Pollack. They include The Slender Thread (1965), with Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft, at 8 p.m.; Three Days of the Condor (1975), starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, at 10 p.m., Tootsie (1982), with Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Charles Durning and Bill Murray, at 12 a.m., and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), with Robert Redford and Will Geer, at 2 a.m.
 
Instant Star (The N, 8 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. American Idol-style talent show winner Jude Harrison is hard at work on her upcoming album while trying to choose between the two young men in her life, boy-next-door Jamie and former boy-band hottie Tommy, as the fourth and final season of Instant Star begins. Alexz Johnson, Tom Rozon and Kristopher Turner star.

Undercover Titanic with Bob Ballard (National Geographic Channel, 9 p.m. ET)
Premiere. You may recall that explorer Dr. Bob Ballard in 1985 found the resting place of the Titanic. What you likely don’t know is that Ballard in 1982 met with Navy officials to ask for their help in locating the legendary ship, only to be given a top-secret assignment to solve the Cold War-era mysteries surrounding the demise of two submarines: Thresher, which sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1963, killing all 129 men on board, and Scorpion, which disappeared in the eastern Atlantic in 1968. If Ballard had any time left after those two investigations, he was told, he could then look for the Titanic. This documentary tells his story.

The Mole (ABC, 10 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. Remember The Mole, the ABC reality series a few years back in which a group of ordinary people traveled to interesting locales and competed in one adventure after another while trying to determine who among them was a saboteur? It was somewhat hard to follow and didn’t do very well in the ratings – not even when the network replaced the ordinary people with C-list celebrities. Well, ABC has revived it as a summer series that begins tonight. The last competitor standing (after all the weekly eliminations) will win $500,000. Hopefully this new Mole has been simplified for casual summer consumption. Jon Kelley (Extra) is the host.

Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search for the Next Elle Woods (MTV, 10 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. NBC’s reality competition series Grease: You’re the One That I Want, in which young performers competed for the lead roles in the current Broadway revival of Grease, was one of the most notorious television failures of 2007. So it’s somewhat surprising that any network would try a similar show. But MTV is taking a shot with The Search for the Next Elle Woods, in which 10 young women will vie for the opportunity to replace Tony Award nominated actress Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods in the current Broadway production of Legally Blonde The Musical. They’ll be judged in their auditions and challenges by legendary casting director Bernard Telsey, LBTM book writer Heather Hach, original cast member Paul Canaan and LBTM director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell. Unlike Grease: YTOTIW, home viewers will not have a say in choosing the winner. Host Haylie Duff will also provide guidance and support to the contestants, as will theater vocal coach Seth Rudetsky.

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 3

Old Gregg (YouTube)
This is likely the strangest thing you will watch all week -- and by the time you’re finished you’ll be searching the Internet for more Old Gregg clips. It’s from the British television series The Mighty Boosh.

30 Days (FX, 10 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. Morgan Spurlock’s outstanding unscripted series in which individuals live for 30 days in ways that are totally outside their own life experience returns for a third season. In tonight’s opener, Spurlock himself steps up and lives as a coal miner in Pineville, West Virginia, completing a state and federally mandated 80-hour training program and then working above and below ground while living with a coal mining family. In upcoming episodes, former Super Bowl champion Ray Crockett will live in a wheelchair, an avid hunter will move in with a Peta worker, a woman opposed to same-sex couples adopting children will live with two men and their four adopted sons, and a woman opposed to gun ownership will live with a hunter and gun collector and learn to shoot. Spurlock will live on a reservation with Native Americans in the final show of the season.

Ghost Ships of the Black Sea (National Geographic Channel, 10 p.m. ET)
Premiere. This fascinating documentary chronicles Dr. Bob Ballard's exploration of the Black Sea after the end of the Cold War. With the help of a robot named Hercules, he excavates two shipwrecks, one 900 years old, the other almost 1500 years old and one of the most pristine ancient vessels ever found. That’s because in the Black Sea, water below 600 feet actually impedes decay because of a lack of oxygen and high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, which make the waters toxic to organisms that would otherwise decompose organic materials.

Work Out (Bravo, 10 p.m. ET)
Those reliably dramatic folks at the Sky Sport & Spa are at their most emotional in this episode, which depicts the exhaustive production of Jackie Warner’s recently released fitness DVD, Workout: One-On-One Training with Jackie.

 

 
 
 
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4
 
Planet Green
Discovery Communications’ new 24-hour eco-lifestyle network (the former Discovery Home) is scheduled to launch today in more than 50 million homes. In the weeks ahead, watch for new reality series starring musical artists Tommy Lee and Ludacris, Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron and Entourage star Adrian Grenier.
 
Making News: Savannah Style (TV Guide Network, 8 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. This observational reality series documenting the professional lives of the on-camera reporters and behind-the-scenes crew at WJCL-TV in Savannah, Georgia, returns for a second season. In an unusual arrangement, WJCL – home to the lowest rated ABC affiliate in the country -- produces a nightly newscast for Fox affiliate WTGS while also keeping up with its own programming.  To put it another way, the WJCL news team is under wicked pressure for a number of reasons.
 
43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards (GAC, 9 p.m. ET)
GAC Premiere. If you missed the recent live telecast of the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards on CBS (which aired opposite the two-hour season finale of ABC’s Desperate Housewives) you might want to catch this repeat tonight on GAC. It’s worth watching just to see Top New Female Vocalist winner Taylor Swift’s performance of Should’ve Said No. Taylor begins the song wearing jeans and a hoodie and ends it in a little black dress – standing under a waterfall!
 
She’s Got the Look (TV Land, 10 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. Ten women over the age of 35 live together in a New York City loft and vie for a modeling contract with Wilhelmina Models (and a fashion spread in Self magazine) in this new competition series hosted by supermodel Kim Alexis. The judges are celebrity stylist Robert Verdi, Wilhelmina president Sean Patterson and supermodel Beverly Johnson.
 
It’s amazing how much comic mileage a kid can get by sticking his finger in another kid’s mouth. But don’t take my word for it: This quick clip has had over 28 million views!
 
Sneezing Panda (YouTube)
Like the little kids in Charlie Bit My Finger, this video proves that a baby panda can steal your heart and split your sides without doing anything special.

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 5

Corey the Unapologetic Party Boy (YouTube)
I’m told this clip is hugely popular among high school students who like to sit back and laugh at tools.

Swingtown (CBS, 10 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. CBS’ riskiest scripted series effort since Viva Laughlin debuts tonight amid much media fanfare over its adult subject matter: Sexual experimentation and partner-swapping in 1970s suburbia. It’s a period drama that centers on Bruce and Susan Miller, a young husband and wife who move to an upscale suburban neighborhood and are drawn into the wild world of their new neighbors, swingers Tom and Trina Decker. If nothing else, you’ll love the soundtrack! Grant Show, Molly Parker, Jack Davenport, Lana Parilla, Josh Hopkins and Miriam Shor star.

Fear Itself (NBC, 10 p.m. ET)
Series Premiere. NBC’s new horror anthology series begins with Sacrifice, about four criminals who find themselves stranded in an old, snow-covered fort inhabited by a trio of sinister sirens. Much torment follows. Jesse Plemons (Friday Night Lights), Stephen Martines (General Hospital) and Jeffrey Pierce star.

 

FRIDAY, JUNE 6

The Naked Brothers Band Movie: Polar Bears (Nickelodeon, 8 p.m. ET)
Premiere. Ninety minutes. Four original songs from The Naked Brothers Band’s second album, I Don’t Want to Go to School, are featured in this original movie that finds Nat and Alex Wolff and their friends spending time in New Orleans during their first national tour. After visiting an old family friend and being reunited with some childhood playmates, the boys witness the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina firsthand and begin to question the environment’s connection to the catastrophe. Alex then watches the documentary An Inconvenient Truth and rallies the band to raise awareness for the environment and for endangered polar bears in particular.

Can You Duet (CMT, 8 p.m. ET)
The five remaining duos perform with a full band at The Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville. Rossi Morreale is the host. Country artist Naomi Judd, vocal coach Brett Manning and songwriter Aimee Mayo are the judges.

Doctor Who (Sci Fi Channel, 9 p.m. ET)
The Doctor, Martha Jones and Donna land on a planet in which humans are engaged in a centuries-old war with liquid-breathing beings known as the Hath. In no time at all, the humans – in desperate need of reinforcements -- have created a female clone of The Doctor, while Martha has been taken prisoner by their enemies, who turn out to be unexpectedly friendly and have Martha wondering who the bad guys really are. Freema Agyman, Nigel Terry and Georgia Moffett are the guest stars.

Meerkat Manor: The Next generation (Animal Planet, 9 p.m. ET)
Season Premiere. The Whiskers family is still recovering from the death of matriarch Flower as Season 4 gets underway. Flower’s daughters Rocket Dog and Maybelline are now at odds: Feisty Rocket Dog is the new leader of the Whiskers clan, while mutinous Maybelline has formed a new mob of her own. The two clans face severe desert weather and attacks from predators, but their toughest survival threat comes from each other. Stockard Channing joins the series as narrator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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