Hot Dots

by Clif Garboden

THURSDAY 5

8:00 (38) Opposing Force (movie). One Air Force commander's simulated POW conditions get a little out of hand and he ends up raping one female recruit and training his men to death. Tom Skerritt, Anthony Zerbe, and Lisa Eichhorn star. From 1986. (Until 10 p.m.)

FRIDAY 6

8:00 (38) The Saint of Fort Washington (movie). Danny Glover and Matt Dillon star as two homeless men into a mutual support thing. From 1993. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (10) Basketball. The NBA finals, with the Bulls and the Jazz squaring off in game three.

SATURDAY 7

1:00 (64) Baseball. The Baltimore Orioles versus the Chicago White Sox.

9:00 (10) Clean Slate (movie). Dana Carvey stars as a private eye with a life-experience quirk lifted (in spirit) from Bill Murray's Groundhog Day -- every time he wakes up, he forgets who he is. This sort of thing would put most of us in the psych ward, but Dana soldiers on, looking for laughs. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (38) Charlie's Ghost Story (movie). This, at least, is different. Cheech Marin stars in a 1994 comedy about the ghost of Spanish explorer Coronado haunting people and lobbying to have his bones properly buried. Who thought of this? Also starring Daphne Zuniga. (Until 2 a.m.)

11:00 (36) On Tour. The first of 13 shows highlighting rock/pop concerts from around the globe. Tonight's show showcases Sting, Steve Earle, Nil Lara, and Amanda Marshall. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 8

1:00 (2) One Potato, Two Potato (movie). Title by Dan Quayle. Barbara Barrie and Bernie Hamilton star as an interracial couple confronting disapproval and worse on all sides -- which, in 1964, when this Larry (Goodbye, Columbus) Peerce-directed drama was made, was formidable. (Until 2:30 p.m.)

2:30 (2) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (movie). A 1961 film from director Tony Richardson, starring Albert Finney as a blue-collar ladies' man who invades the lives of Shirley Anne Field and Rachel Roberts. (Until 4 p.m.)

7:30 (10) Basketball. The Bulls and the Jazz move to game four.

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Doctor Finlay: Child's Play. A 13-year-old girl's mum is missing; Finlay suspects the worst. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Our Son, the Matchmaker (movie). First our heroine (Ann Jillian) is reunited with the son (Drew Ebersole) she never knew. (Doesn't remember giving birth? Is there an amnesia twist here?) Then she's reunited with the boy's father (David Andrews). Somehow Ellen Burstyn gets dragged into this. Heartwarming, for sure. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (6) Without Consent (movie). Parents throw their rebellious daughter into the Snake Pit. Jennie Garth plays the kid; Jill Eikenberry also stars. Question is: is Jill the desperate mom or the kindly shrink who sorts things out? We could see it either way. (Until 11 p.m.)

MONDAY 9

9:00 (2) The American Experience: Vietnam: A Television History: America's Enemy and Tet, 1968. The first hour of this week's dual installment looks at the war from the perspective of the North Vietnamese and those fabled American POWs. The second hour covers the war's turning point -- a New Year's offensive that shocked Washington into the realization that 1) nobody loved them and 2) this foreign escapade was no minor matter. It also woke up the brighter segment of the population to the fact that our Army should never have been where it wasn't wanted. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (6) The Temp (movie). A temp worker signs on at a troubled Portland (Maine? Oregon?) firm and insinuates her way up the corporate ladder. Starring Lara Flynn Boyle, Timothy Hutton, Faye Dunaway, Steven Weber, and Dwight Schultz. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (2) Mr. Bean. There aren't enough episodes to this peculiar Rowan Atkinson tour de force, but replaying them nightly at 11 p.m. sure beats the heck out of more episodes of Are You Being Served? (Until 11:30 p.m.)

TUESDAY 10

8:00 (2) Nova: In Search of Human Origins, part two. The first edition of this Nova three-parter rerun is forever lost in the swamp of rescheduling caused by last week's Auction. Tonight, anthropologist Donald Johanson, the man whose team unearthed the bones of Lucy, recalls mankind's scavenger days. (That was about two million years ago; you probably don't remember.) To be repeated on Wednesday at midnight. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (12) Sea World/Busch Garden Special. The annual soggy infomercial. See 9 p.m. below for shameless tie-in. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (64) Hockey. The Philadelphia Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings will be playing game five of the Stanley Cup finals here, if necessary. For those with cable, games three and four were on ESPN this past Thursday and Saturday; game six, if necessary, will be on ESPN this coming Thursday. Starting time 8 p.m. in all cases.

9:00 (2) Frontline: Easy Money. How America's gambling underground became the nation's "gaming industry" and can now exert considerable political influence. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Free Willy (movie). Limit, one to a customer. Think of it as either an embarrassingly bad kids' movie or an extension of the 8 p.m. Sea World ad. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) P.O.V.: Battle for the Minds. The theme is "women in the ministry." Filmmaker Steven Lipscomb's documentary about his mother's struggle to become a Southern Baptist pastor. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 11

9:00 (2) American Visions: A Wave from the Atlantic and Streamlines and Breadlines. Robert Hughes, Time magazine art critic, continues his look at America's history and character through its art by revisiting the Ashcan School's intrigue with the squalor and excitement of urban American and Depression-era art-stars Isamu Noguchi and Edward Hopper. This is an excellent series, by the way, provoking just the sort of thoughts that most TV shows assume viewers are incapable of having. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Bionic Ever After? (movie). The Six Million Dollar Man (Lee Majors) and the Bionic Woman (Lindsay Wagner) try to get hitched. Had to happen. Naturally the course of true wedlock doesn't run smooth. A 1994 TV-movie, but not, so far as we can make out, based in fact. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (10) Basketball. Game five between the Bulls and the Jazz, if necessary -- which we suspect it will be.

THURSDAY 12

8:00 (64) Hockey. Stanley Cup finals game five.

8:00 (38) Stephen King's Graveyard Shift (movie). Horror show about vanishing employees at some mill. Starring David Andrews and Kelly Wolf. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone. Except that, in the wake of the death of Jeremy Brett, there's no Sherlock. Instead, brother Mycroft (Charles Gray) goes after the stolen Crown jewel while "Watson is visited by the eccentric Garrideb sisters" -- who belong to a completely different Holmes tale, where they're not sisters, or even women. With Brett as Holmes, this series was merely dull. Now it's looking weird. (Until 10 p.m.)