Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Thursday, December 26. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
Ground Floor (TBS, 10 p.m.): Todd VanDerWerff liked the four episodes he saw of the Bill Lawrence sitcom Ground Floor when he reviewed it last month, and the show has steadily kept improving since then. So why aren’t we regularly covering it? Well, because it’s on Thursdays, and there are only so many of us, and there are too many good TV shows right now. But TBS is airing a new episode on the night after Christmas, which struck us as a good chance to check in on the show. Ryan McGee has been keeping up and will let you know how its seventh episode is.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Parks And Recreation (NBC, 8 p.m.): You still have to wait until January (which isn’t all that far away, really) until new episodes of this start appearing on your television set, but you can spend tonight reminding yourself of the glories of its one-hour season premiere, which sent the whole cast to London.
Gypsy Sisters (TLC, 9 p.m.): We had no clue that TLC’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding had proved popular enough to prompt a spinoff, but here’s a show about some gypsy sisters. The network’s promo site for the show describes it as “a raucous look at life as gypsies.” Huh. We’re sort of glad we’ve avoided that.
Lidia Celebrates America (PBS, 9 p.m.): You know how sometimes, PBS will put a show on the air, and then it will run for years and years and years and years, and you won’t even remember it exists until you accidentally come across it on the programming grid? That’s how we feel about Lidia Bastianich’s shows.
River Monsters (Animal Planet, 9 p.m.): The show celebrates the end of its fifth season by sending Jeremy to Scotland to track down the Loch Ness Monster, despite Nessie clearly being a lake monster, and not a river monster. Does the show expect us to believe this is some sort of magic xylophone?!
A Special Edition of 20/20: Mysteries Of The Castle—Beyond Downton Abbey (ABC, 9 p.m.): A full two-hour special purporting to unlock the secret mysteries of the castle where they film some of Downton Abbey? Hey, it’s your news division, ABC. Do whatever you want with it. We’re not saying anything.
Rodeo Girls (A&E, 10 p.m.): Sonia Saraiya didn’t like this so much when she reviewed it a couple of weeks ago, but who knows if you’ll feel the same way? Go ahead. Roll the dice. It’s not like there’s so much on tonight you can’t watch a potentially shitty reality show for an hour or so.
The Faculty (Syfy, 7 p.m.): We don’t really find anybody talking about this movie ever, but we have this weird, intense nostalgia for it and, in particular, all of the times that Ain’t It Cool News wrote about it because it was filming in Austin. Man, that site used to be our homepage. And now we never visit.
No Country For Old Men (IFC, 8 p.m.): This Coen brothers adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel won four Oscars—including Best Picture—and just might be our favorite Coens film. Because none of us has anything better to do, for extra points, please rank and rate the Coens’ filmography in comments.
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (TCM, 8 p.m.): Maybe you’d been thinking about seeing Ben Stiller’s version of the classic James Thurber short story, but here’s TCM to gently remind you that, no, what you really need is to just stay at home and check out the classics. Don’t worry about anything new.
Barclay’s Premier League Encore (NBC Sports, 7:30 p.m.): There’s plenty of mediocre American college football on this evening, so why not check out some English football instead? Then you can be sort of insufferable about your favorite team and constantly berate people about Manchester United or etc.
NBA Basketball: Grizzlies at Rockets (TNT, 8 p.m.): We don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but this marks two days in a row that you can watch the Rockets, which is by far the most attention any of us will ever have paid to something from Houston.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Breaking Bad (September): Regardless of how you felt about our silver medal show for 2013 (and clearly some of us hated it, if it only placed second), the excitement around the show was palpable, and Donna Bowman’s reviews were one of the highlights of the year. Thrill to her write-up of “Ozymandias”!