BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 22

3:00 (44) Masterpiece Theatre: White Teeth: The Trouble with Millat and The Return of Magid. Repeated from last week. The unwelcome conclusion of this adaptation of Zadie Smith’s peculiar novel about multi-cultural Londoners careering into the end of the century. To be repeated on Friday at midnight and on Saturday at 1:30 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 5 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Warrior Challenge: Vikings. Repeated from last week. Marines and cops play at being Nordic invaders. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Basketball. The Detroit Pistons versus the New Jersey Nets in NBA Easterrn Conference final game #3.

8:00 (64) Summer Music Mania. A concert and bikini contest spanning the music spectrum from Alice Cooper to Smash Mouth to Ziggy Marley to Kelly Clarkson (from American Idol, whose Justin Guarini helps host). Alice Cooper will not participate in the bikini contest. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline/World. The return of the news magazine that brings US audiences reports from places US news outlets ignore. Good idea, but it suffers from a lack of advance publicity. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: Murder Rooms: The Dark Origins of Sherlock Holmes. Ian Richardson and Robin Laing play Dr. Joseph Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle (the inspiration for Holmes and — sort of — Watson) in this grim tale of serial murder in 1870s Edinburgh. To be repeated tonight at midnight on Channel 2. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 23

9:00 (2) Now with Bill Moyers. Seldom a disappointment — despite our lack of advance info. Support Bill. (Until 10 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Masterpiece Theatre: White Teeth: The Trouble with Millat and The Return of Magid. Repeated from Thursday at 3 p.m.

SATURDAY 24

Noon (44) Becoming American: The Chinese Experience: Gold Mountain Dreams, Between Two Worlds, and No Turning Back. The entire series aired in one-hour installments alternating with half-hour vignettes about the Chinese-American culture clash (Personal Journeys). Part one looks at the Chinese role in building the American railroads. The second edition (starting at 2 p.m.) examines the Exclusion Act of 1882 (which stopped immigration from China) and its violent aftermath. And the final installment (starting at 4 p.m.) looks at Chinese-Americans in World War II and the consequences of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act. (Until 6 p.m.)

1:00 (64) Baseball. The Sox versus the Cleveland Indians.

4:00 (6) Basketball. The Los Angeles Sparks versus the Connecticut Sun in WNBA play.

6:30 (44) Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray. Profiling the Japanese-American photographer who first documented life inside the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. (Until 7 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Anna and the King (movie). Chow Yun-fat and Jodie Foster team up in this 1999 adaptation of the memoir that inspired The King and I. Foster plays Anna Leonowens, a teacher sent to Siam to bring the locals into the 19th century. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (10) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (movie). Sean Connery joins Harrison Ford for this most-fun Jones episode from Steven Spielberg. The story’s holy grail is . . . well, the Holy Grail. River Phoenix plays Indiana as a lad. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Steve Earle and Kasey Chambers. (Until 1 a.m.)

1:30 a.m. (2) Masterpiece Theatre: White Teeth: The Trouble with Millat and The Return of Magid. Repeated from Thursday at 3 p.m.

SUNDAY 25

11:00 a.m. (6) The Indianapolis 500. Round and round and round and round. (Until 3:30 p.m.)

7:00 (6) Toy Story (movie). The original adventures of Woody and Buzz, featuring total computer animation and the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. From 1995, and it never gets old. (Until 9 p.m.)

7:00 (10) 100 Years of Hope and Humor. A repeat airing of last April’s tribute to Bob Hope, who actually does turn 100 this week. Lots of old clips — from back when he was funny and then when he wasn’t. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (2) National Memorial Day Concert. A typically odd collection of performers — Charles Durning, Ruby Dee, Renée Fleming, and Tony Randall — celebrate our war dead (including the recent additions) with the National Symphony Orchestra from Washington, DC. Ossie Davis hosts. To be repeated tonight at midnight and 3 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Notorious (movie). Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman chase Nazi Claude Rains around South America in this 1946 Hitchcock film. (Until 9:45 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Message in a Bottle (movie). Truly unbearable 1999 romantic yarn about a widower coming out of his shell. With Kevin Costner, Paul Newman, and Robin Wright Penn. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Lucky Jim. It’s nice to see Ballykissangel’s Stephen Tompkinson in a new setting, but this adaptation of a Kingsley Amis satire about college life in the early ’50s is transparent and tedious. Perhaps it spoke to the people who lived it, but most of them have now departed this earth. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

9:45 (44) Spellbound (movie). Ingrid Bergman plays shrink to Gregory Peck as he delves into his past to discover why he’s afraid of stripes. (Until midnight.)

Midnight and 3 a.m. (44) National Memorial Day Concert. Repeated from this evening at 8 p.m.

MONDAY 26

8:00 (10) The Making of Fear Factor. Behind the scenes of NBC’s most disgusting contest show. Learn how FF interns are dispatched to collect rancid sheep brains. See network lawyers encouraging contestants to sign their lives away. (Until 8:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Cuba and Haiti. Trekker Ian Wright rumbas around Havana’s street markets and the Bay of Pigs before joining the rodeo in Camaguey. Then it’s off to Port-au-Prince and the rest of benighted little Haiti for a little Rara band action and, of course, some voodoo. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Ken Burns’s American Stories: The Congress. The line for this is, we " explore the history and promise of the United States Congress. " As far as we can see, Congress promises to allow a confederation of moguls and nitwits to destroy the Constitution. But that’s probably not what Burns or his corporate underwriters had in mind. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Indie Select: A Brief Flight: Hazel Ying Lee and the Women Who Flew Pursuit. Determined to leave no accomplishment unrecognized, this film focuses on the first Chinese-American woman pilot. Credit where credit is due and all that, but when it comes to topics, we’re approaching self-parody here. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Indie Select: Beyond Barbed Wire. A tribute to the segregated Japanese-American combat units that fought (for us) in World War II. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Great Museums: The George Eastman House. Been there. The grounds are remarkable; there’s less photography than you’d expect; the Kodak memorabilia are wonderful; and, to judge by the décor, George Eastman was one odd dude. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 27

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Music from the Archives: Danilo Pérez in Concert. Afro-Latin jazz on Pérez’s piano. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Mountain of Ice. A trip to Antarctica to scale that continent’s highest peak, something called the Vinson Massif. The assault team includes Into this Author Jon Krakauer. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Gormenghast. This is some sort of super-nerd fantasy/gothic/intrigue that makes no sense to the uninitiated. Which is most of us. Very, very hard to watch, despite the involvement of Ian Richardson, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, and Rhys Meyers. Shown in its entirety. (Until midnight.)

9:00 (2) Warrior Challenge: Gladiators. This week, we have a bunch of Royal Marines going to combat school with Kirk Douglas and Russell Crowe and then meeting up in the arena. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m. and on Thursday at 8 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 28

8:00 (2) Berga: Soldiers of Another War. The last film made by the late Charles Guggenheim tells how 300 Americans captured in the Battle of the Bulge were shipped off to Nazi concentration camps because they were (or looked) Jewish. Guggenheim would have been among them but for an illness he’d contracted before his unit left for the front. (See Tamara Wieder’s interview with Charles’s daughter Grace in News & Features.) To be repeated tonight at midnight. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Running Mate. A film by Theodore Bogosian featuring old clips of and interviews with Jack Kemp, Al Gore, Bob Dole, Dan Quayle, Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferarro, and Jimmy Carter. The subject is the evolving role of the vice-presidency. Although " devolving " might be a better term given our current veep. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) West Point. Recapping the 200-year history of teaching the art of killing on the Hudson. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (2) American Masters: Robert Capa: In Love and War. Not sure where the love comes into it. A career bio of war-documentary photographer Capa, a Hungarian expat who shot the Spanish Civil War and actually parachuted into the Rhine Valley on D-Day. He was killed in 1954 with the French in Indochina. To be repeated tonight at 1:30 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 29

7:30 (2) Basic Black: Forgotten Warriors. Recollections of an all-African-American unit fighting the Korean War. (This was an Emmy-winning edition of Basic Black.) (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Warrior Challenge: Gladiators. Repeated from Tuesday at 9 p.m.

8:00 (6) Alien: Resurrection (movie). Two centuries after Sigourney Weaver fought off the alien, the big ugly bitch is back — the alien, that is. Sigourney’s back as well, resurrected as a clone because she’s the alien-killer expert. Winona Ryder helps out. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (64) Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape. We thought Fox News was on at 10 p.m. (Until 8:30 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: The Wyvern Mystery, parts one and two. One of the seminal (1869) gothic horror tales from the pen of J. Sheridan Le Fanu. The Mystery Web site describes the plot thus: " A beautiful young woman elopes with the son of her repulsive guardian and finds herself in a country house terrorized by an evil presence. Then things grow worse. " Starring Derek Jacobi and Naomi Watts. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Mystery: The Wyvern Mystery. Repeated from this evening at 9 p.m.