Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, December 7, and Saturday, December 8. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
30 For 30 (ESPN, 9 p.m., Saturday): Yes, Bo knows football, and yes, Bo knows baseball, and yes, WOT knows this is a cliché way to open a capsule about a new Bo Jackson documentary, but have you ever considered whether Bo knows how good the Tecmo Bowl version of himself is? Alasdair Wilkins seriously once scored 50,000 points with that guy, and that was just in the first quarter. And here’s the eerie thing: Alasdair didn’t have to touch the controller once. Not once. It was as if it was controlled by some strange and terrifying Jacksonian magic.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Fringe (Fox, 9 p.m., Friday): Doesn’t it feel like this show’s been gone for five years, even if it’s only a couple of weeks? And hasn’t it been hard to wait to see what happens after that last cliffhanger? Well played, Fringe. Noel Murray will be pleased to observe you from a clinical and detached remove.
Saturday Night Live (NBC, 11:30 p.m., Saturday): We’ll bet you’re excited about Django Unchained. We sure are! To promote the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film, its star, Jaime Foxx, stops by to host SNL. David Sims wants all of you to pick the cast member you think would best play Tarantino in a sketch.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
The X-Files (1 p.m., Saturday): Zack Handlen gets to “Hungry,” the episode when the writers of The X-Files realized that, shit, they had a whole seventh season to write, then looks at “Millennium,” which attempts to awkwardly wrap up Chris Carter’s other show by unleashing zombies upon the world. Right.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome (Machinima.com, 8 p.m., Friday): While we think that airing a pilot the network passed on an act at a time, spread over several weeks, is kind of a weird way to show off your show, hey, what do we know? Rowan Kaiser takes a look at the early days of William Adama.
Adrift: 47 Days With Sharks (Animal Planet, 9 p.m., Friday): Look. The sharks would be terrifying for the first day or two. We get that. But wouldn’t they sorta start to become your buddies after a few days? If we’ve learned anything from the movies, it’s that constant contact in an enclosed space equals friends.
Restless (Sundance, 9 p.m., Friday): A daughter learns her mother was a World War II era British spy who’s ready to come in from out of the cold in this two-part miniseries, debuting tonight. Since this is all British, it will probably be very reserved and have far too little of people kicking each other in the face.
Hunted (Cinemax, 10 p.m. Friday): The season finale’s arrived, and Todd VanDerWerff thinks he knows what’s going on, but how can you be sure, right? Anyway, he’ll take a look at the season as a whole, and you can pepper him with questions about what happened that he surely won’t be able to answer.
The American Giving Awards (NBC, 8 p.m., Saturday): Hey, have you wanted to be nominated for an award? Give us five dollars. Congratulations! Now, you’re nominated for the American Giving Awards. You should probably show up at the ceremony so host Joel McHale can give you your awesome prize.
The 12 Disasters Of Christmas (Syfy, 9 p.m., Saturday): What’s Christmas without 12 disasters? It’s nothing, that’s what! Here are the disasters we most want for Christmas this year: flood, killer bee swarm, chemical spill, explosion, volcanic eruption, molasses flood, attack by 50-foot-tall woman.
Frequency (Fox Movie Channel, 8 p.m., Friday): Look, you guys. This heartwarming time-travel movie about a son who somehow manages to communicate via amateur radio with his father in the past isn’t as bad as its stupid premise would suggest! Really! We kind of liked this one. High praise, we know.
Inception (TNT, 8 p.m., Friday): We thought about making this capsule just the first level of What’s On Tonight, and then you’d have to jump down to another level, and then at the bottom, you’d find the top pick, then have to work your way back out, but ugh, can you imagine how much work that would be?!
Summertime (TCM, 8 p.m., Saturday): Katherine Hepburn turns in one of her best performances as an American visiting Europe in this film directed by David Lean. We suspect Hepburn and Lean always wanted to work together again, but for some reason, he just didn’t think she should play T.E. Lawrence.
NCAA Division I Football Tournament: Sam Houston State at Montana State (ESPN2, 8 p.m., Friday): Hey, look, America! You do have a college football playoff system! It’s just for the teams nobody cares about, like these two and (sigh) South Dakota State. (WOT begins weeping for its beloved Jackrabbits.)
UFC: Henderson vs. Diaz: From Seattle (Fox, 8 p.m., Saturday): Take it from us, UFC: If you want to work your way up in the world of professional sports, you’re going to need a little marketing flair. Names like “Henderson” and “Diaz” and “Seattle” aren’t going to cut it. May we suggest “Bonesmasher”? No?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
NTSF: SD: SUV:: (Thursday): Is there a better person to spend the holidays with than Paul Scheer? If you’re going to say something other than, “No,” we don’t want to hear the answer. Because Kevin McFarland and Paul Scheer are coming to your house this Christmas, and you are going to like it.