Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Literary interests on PBS...

PBS has lately been in a cycle of "Contemporary" Masterpiece shows. But the Classics are back! In this post I'm referring to our local Prairie Public dates/times, so if you have a different PBS station, check the listings here.

First off, Tess of the D'Ubervilles will be shown in two parts, starting Sunday the 4th at 9pm. The Book Club has thrown that title out as a possible read, so maybe this will be some motivation. I've read it in the past, and I know I enjoyed it, but it was so long ago...I look forward to the next couple Sunday evenings! And so does Aaron, I bet.

Before the Great Knee Injury of 2008, he would spend Sunday evenings playing basketball. Now the poor guy will be subjected to my TV viewing tastes - or be forced to play Guitar Hero for a while. Choices, choices. Maybe a bit enticing to the gentlemen out there is the fact that Tess is played by Gemma Arterton, from the Bond movie Quantum of Solace. Yep, she's a babe.

After Tess is done, Wuthering Heights will start, again in two parts, the first on Sunday the 18th. Now folks, this may sound sacrilegious for a classics-lover to say, but Wuthering Heights has never been a favorite. I even gave it a second chance and read it 5 years after the first time. Still, I couldn't really see what Cathy saw in the (frankly, crazy) Heathcliff, besides the fact that he's really hot. All the casting folks make sure of that, you can bet. In fact, Heathcliff is played by "British heartthrob" Tom Hardy. Let's see if this helps me understand his appeal any!

Tom Hardy is also in Oliver Twist, also on the Masterpiece schedule, along with David Copperfield (starring 10 yr old Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe! Ooh, that mention should get me LOTS of Google hits!)

One last plug for PBS. I noticed a name I recognized on the line up for Austin City Limits. On Saturday the 17th, Idina Menzel with be on with Josh Groban (and Ravi Coltrane, btw!). Menzel is ONLY Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West in the soundtrack recording of Wicked. Folks, she has an amazing voice. (And, she's married to Taye Diggs! This is what I learned from Wikipedia. They were in Rent together.)

ALSO of note on Austin City Limits is the show on the 31st - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova are on! There's actually a movie about their music, this little thing called Once, which has won some awards or something. One called an Oscar, I guess.

All in all, I'm excited about the next month's prospects for television. Now, to call the cable company...we fear the D-TV changeover will leave us channel-less, even with the "boxes"...

3 comments:

. said...

awesome pbs update! tim and i just stayed up till midnight watching a documentary on a pbs channel last night.

what's a pbs "channel?" well, with the D box, we receive four pbs channels.

you should totally get a box.

Lyz said...

Oh, we have the boxes. Problem is, if we use them (now anyway) we get less channels than before. In the other room, we get lots, but they don't stay tuned in well.

I guess it's more like PBS stations - various regions have their own station. Prairie Public covers all of ND, some of MN, up to Manitoba. I imagine it works kind of like zip codes!:)

Noel said...

The different stations available in different rooms situation is what drove us to our econo-cable ($38/month for stations 2-13 and 300-3xx). Because of the locations of the transmitter towers, Fargo gets relatively weak signals for an urban area.

With Sunday night football going away, I suspect I'll need to study the MPT options in more detail with my spouse.