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Programming

Best Bets - Week of 1/11/10

Posted by Greg Petersen on 01/11 at 09:08 AM

Some Excellent New Shows this Week – Two from the BBC: “Life on Mars” and “Stephen Fry in America.”

Radio Feature: Dairy Prices (Tentatively scheduled for Friday during “Morning Edition.”) – Milk prices plunged in 2009.  Dairy farmers lost thousands of dollars a month, and struggled just to hold on hoping for a rebound.  John Frey of the Center for Dairy Excellence talks about a recent rise in the amount being paid to dairy farmers, a recent one-time emergency subsidy, and the dairy outlook for 2010.  Dairy farmers at the 2010 Farm Show in Harrisburg talk about their own situations.

TV: AMERICAN MASTERS – “Sam Cooke: Crossing Over” – Monday at 9pm – The 23rd season of AMERICAN MASTERS opens with a stirring profile of the great Sam Cooke (1931-64), who helped invent and popularize soul music with such classics as “You Send Me” (1957), “Chain Gang” (1960) and “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1962).

INDEPENDENT LENS  – “Young@Heart” – Tuesday, 9pm – A delightful look at the Young@Heart Chorus, New England senior citizens who sing such unconventional songs as James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” and Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia.”

LIFE ON MARS – Thursday, 10pm – “Life on Mars” tells the fictional story of DCI Sam Tyler (John Simm), a police officer in service with the Greater Manchester Police. After being hit by a car in 2006, Tyler awakens in 1973, 33 years in the past. There, he finds himself working for the predecessor of his police force in 2006, the Manchester and Salford Police as a Detective Inspector one rank lower than his 2006 rank of Detective Chief Inspector. While under the command of Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), the character faces various culture clashes, most frequently regarding his modern approach to policing and the traditional un-scientific methods of his colleagues.  This BBC Production has won many critical raves and, frankly, is mauch better than ABC’s “Americanization” of the series that lasted just one season.

STEPHEN FRY IN AMERICA – Sunday 7pm – A six-part BBC series in which British actor and comedian Stephen Fry travels across America to reveal a country in which he was almost born. Just before Fry was born, his father was offered a job at Princeton University, in New Jersey, but chose to turn it down in favor of Hampstead. In the series he travels, mostly in a London cab, through all 50 U.S. states of the country that he could have nearly called home and which has always fascinated him.