BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 15

7:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with George C. Wolfe. Host Darren Duarte interviews the Tony-winning Broadway director of Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk and Angels in America. Wolfe’s life story is remarkable indeed. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Islam: Empire of Faith: The Messenger. This multi-part documentary of the history and the cultural/religious impact of Islam begins with the story of the Prophet Muhammad. Warning: John Ashcroft has ordered all cable companies to keep a list of subscribers who watch this. To be repeated tonight at 12:30 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: From China with Love. A real-life US-intelligence screw-up right out of the pages of Ian Fleming. In April 2003, our suddenly vigilant State Department arrested FBI agent J.J. Smith and his primary source, Katrina Leung, whose dope on the People’s Republic had serviced the nosy needs of four presidential administrations. Turns out that J.J. and Katrina were lovers, and the spying was working both ways. (Until 10 p.m.)

FRIDAY 16

9:30 (2) Einstein’s Wife. Make that his first wife, the underappreciated inspiration and co-developer of the theory of relativity, Mileva Maric. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Coupling, "Faithless." Jane competes with God as Jeff is tempted to stray from Julia when co-worker Wilma corners him at work. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

SATURDAY 17

2:00 (6) Basketball. Wake Forest versus Duke — joined in progress.

3:00 (6) Basketball. The Minnesota Timberwolves versus the Houston Rockets.

7:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Forsyte Saga, part four. Repeated from last week. In which Irene gets together with Old Jolyon. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Live from Lincoln Center: Joshua Bell and Orpheus at the Penthouse. Surly they don’t mean Orpheus the late-’60s Boston band who gave the world "I Can’t Find the Time To Tell You." No, they don’t. Instead, it’s the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra jamming with Josh Bell in the Stanley J. Kaplan Penthouse back room at Lincoln Center. Program undisclosed. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (10) As Good As It Gets (movie). Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, and Cuba Gooding Jr. star in director James L. Brooks’s 1997 darkish romantic comedy in which a cranky writer, a gay artist, and a waitress form an peculiar/unlikely alliance of convenience. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Ballykissangel, "All Bar One." This is being hyped as a "new season," but don’t get excited — you’ve seen these episodes before. Niamh and her da squabble over ownership of Fitzgerald’s Pub and the town goes without a priest pending the arrival of Don Wycherly’s Father Aidan to replace Stephen Tompkinson’s Father Clifford. Not a bad string of shows, but the loss of Tompkinson and, more important, his then-wife Dervla Kirwan was a serious blow. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:30 (2) Great Performances: Joshua Bell: "West Side Story" Suite from Central Park. Selections from Leonard Bernstein’s unassailable Broadway musical performed by violinist Bell and the New York Philharmonic (under William Eddins) en plein air, as it were. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Great Performances: The Los Angeles Philharmonic Inaugurates Walt Disney Concert Hall. How great a performance could this be? Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the LA Phil in the kickoff concert for the new Disney hall. On the bill are Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps plus new works by John Adams and . . . uh . . . John Williams. Helping translate all this obscurity for the masses are Audra McDonald, Yo-Yo Ma, Josh Groban, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Now, does everyone know one another . . . ? (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 18

3:00 (12) Football. The Indianapolis Colts versus the Pats in the AFC championship game, assuming they’re able to thaw the Pats players out in time.

5:00 (2) The American Experience: Reconstruction: The Second Civil War — Revolution and Retreat. Repeated from last week. This new two-part documentary looks at the struggle between North and South from 1863 through 1877 as it tries to explain how half the country dealt with defeat while the other half exploited victory and how we ended up with the troubled South that provoked the civil-rights movement. (Until 8 p.m.)

6:30 (64) Football. The Carolina Panthers versus the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC championship game.

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Forsyte Saga, part five. In which Old Jolyon leaves an unexpected legacy. To be repeated tonight at 11 p.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Double Jeopardy (movie). Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd star in a 1999 mystery about a woman who’s convicted of murdering her husband even though he’s still alive. Figuring she has nothing to lose, she sets out to kill the guy for real. (Until 11 p.m.)

5:30 a.m. (2) Fiesta in the Sky. Juan and Mandingo couldn’t stand it any longer. All their lives, they’d seen the balloons pop up over the mountains to the west while their tiny village suffered in poverty. Today, they were determined to get a grenade launcher and do something about it. It wouldn’t be a full week unless Channel 2 aired this half-hour documentary about hot-air ballooning at least once. (Until 6 a.m.)

MONDAY 19

8:00 (64) American Idol. The start of a new three-part series. Parts two and three show up on Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Israel and the Sinai Desert. Don’t be shocked if this turns out to be a tour of Tuscany (there are some contradictions in the WGBH program schedules). If not, we have Trekker Justine Shapiro celebrating Shabbat at a Tel Aviv nightclub, pitching in at a kibbutz, buying Bedouin veils at a desert market, and, finally, ascending Mount Sinai to receive the schedule for the next season of Globe Trekker. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: Citizen King. A chronicle of the last five years (1963-’68) of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life documented through eyewitness accounts of his friends, movement associates, journalists, cops, and historians. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (See Gerald Peary’s review in "Film Culture," on page 4.) (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) DNA: The Secret of Life and Playing God. Two-fifths of a new series on the history of DNA science, from Watson & Crick’s double-helix model to recent genome mapping. (Until 11 p.m.)

3:30 a.m. (2) Fiesta in the Sky. Or twice. It was a horrific sight. The colorful balloon had been snared by high-tension wires. Its passengers had been reduced to cinders; their picnic lunch lay scattered over the desolate hillside. Even Fox News refused to air the footage. (Until 4 a.m.)

TUESDAY 20

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Olga Román in Concert. Brazilian jazz, samba, and bossa nova from the Spanish vocalist accompanied by Danilo Pérez on piano. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Secrets of the Crocodile Caves. We all have our day-to-day struggles, but consider the under-reported fight for survival between the lemurs and the crocs of Madagascar. Yeah . . . okay . . . compared with that, your cellulite and your parking problems seem a lot less important, don’t they? To be repeated tonight at 1 and 3 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 8 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Indie Select: Scrabylon. Yes, there are high-stakes Scrabble players, and Scott Peterson’s film captures their zeal in all its cutthroat glory at the 2001 World Scrabble Championships at the Venetian Hotel in Vegas. This is an annual, English-language, multi-round tournament where winning scores tend to be in the high 400s. For a look at the kind of folks who get this far up the ladder, check out www.scrabble-assoc.com/tourneys/2001/wsc/build/player/04.html. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Independent Lens: Life Matters. A portrait of Dr. Curtis Boyd, a one-time Pentecostal preacher who risked everything to provide safe illegal abortions to women in the 1960s — shown by his filmmaking son, Kyle Boyd. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 21

8:00 (44) The Civil War: A Very Bloody Affair (1862) and Forever Free (1862). The replay of the landmark Ken Burns documentary continues with a look at the invention of modern (more terrible) warfare and a examination of the events leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation. To be repeated tonight at 1:30 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s. Linda Hunt narrates TV’s first complete look at dementia — all based on a bestselling book by David Shenk. The show comes in two parts. First, we get a two-hour documentary covering everything from the state of the Alzheimer’s epidemic to how families can better cope with the disease to the search for a cure. That’s followed (at 10:30 p.m.) by a half-hour guide to local and national Alzheimer resources hosted by Frasier’s David Hyde Pierce. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 22

7:30 (2) Basic Black: Boston Jazz Memoir. A history of Boston’s African-American jazz scene, plus an interview with local drummer Roy Haynes. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Islam: Empire of Faith: The Awakening. This clearly seditious series continues with more historical insights the Bushies wouldn’t want you to hear — primarily that during the Middle Ages, when Western Europe was being kept poor, ignorant, and violent by despots within the Church and without, Muslim culture in Spain was blossoming and coming up with a lot of the math and science for which Christian intellectuals would later take credit. We also get a look at the accomplishments of the House of Wisdom, a Muslim think tank in Baghdad, and (are you watching, George?) a history of the Crusades from Islam’s point of view. To be repeated tonight at 12:30 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: Chasing Saddam’s Weapons. Looking for those imaginary weapons of mass destruction with BBC reporter Jane Corbin. A tad out of date because this program was scheduled before January 9, when the Irish Times reported: "The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn a 400-member military team it sent to Baghdad to scour Iraq for evidence of unconventional weapons . . . . The move indicates that the US does not now expect to find illegal weapons, the main reason given by President Bush for the war last year that toppled Saddam Hussein. At the same time, a prestigious Washington-based research foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has published a scathing report on President Bush’s case for war." And yet our voters are so fat-headed that they’ve been convinced that Saddam attacked the World Trade Center. Bush is a liar. If you voted for him, you’re an idiot. If you vote for him again, you’ll be a criminal. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

5:30 a.m. (2) Fiesta in the Sky. A trio of ghosts with severe anxiety disorders rose from their graves and ascended in a cluster to the safety of 700 feet. From Highway 12, Mona Davenport, recently widowed, caught a glimpse of the specters in the rear-view mirror of her SUV and wondered who would be ballooning at 3 a.m. (Until 6 a.m.)