BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 15

8:00 (2) Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution: The Rock and the River. Another look back at the roots of Christianity with Peter as prime martyr and Paul as his publicist. To be concluded on Thursday starting at 8 p.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: The Man Who Knew. Well, one of them, anyway. Before Richard Clarke gave it a shot, FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neill suggested that somebody stop Osama bin Laden before he attacked the US. For his trouble, O’Neill was fired and, in one of history’s great ironies, got a job with security at the World Trade Center, where he died on September 11. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (10) The Apprentice Season Finale. You’re all fired. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 16

8:00 (64) Baseball. The Sox versus the New York Yankees.

10:00 (44) Coupling. Some episode of this brilliant Brit-com will air in this time slot. The WGBX folks can’t seem to pin down which chapter will run on any given week — but they’re all worth seeing at least twice. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

2:00 a.m. (2) Globe Trekker: Northern Thailand and Laos. Trekker Ian Wright heads to Southeast Asia to shop, haggle, box, honor monkeys, and have a tug of war with an elephant. To be repeated on Sunday at midnight on Channel 44. (Until 3 a.m.)

SATURDAY 17

Noon (44) Art Close Up Special: Poet Frank Bidart. A film by Jay Anania on the career of poet Bidart, one-time pal of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell and noted for dramatic narrative poems. To be repeated this evening at 7:30 p.m. (Until 12:40 p.m.)

12:40 (44) Voices and Visions Marathon. This is National Poetry Month, and this is Poetry Afternoon on WGBX. In order, at roughly 65-minute intervals, we’ll have profiles of Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath. Scattered in between will be readings of works by Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Frost, and others. (Until 7:30 p.m.)

2:00 (12) NTL Cheer/Dance Collegiate Championship. That’s cheerleading — except that the craft of organized rooting has gone way beyond the " Give us a ‘B’! " days of yore. In fact, the modern of art of cheering (or cheer/dance) involves Broadway-level choreography and a lot of hootchie-kootchie homages. Team? What team? (Until 3 p.m.)

3:00 (6) Hockey. More Stanley Cup conference-quarterfinal action, unless all eight quarterfinals ended early, in which case we could get semifinal action.

8:00 (2) Splendid Splinters: The Armand LaMontagne Story. LaMontagne is a Rhode Island sculptor who’s made wooden likenesses of Ted Williams, Bobby Orr, Larry Bird, and Carl Yastrzemski. Do you suppose they come alive at midnight? To be repeated tonight at 2 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (12) Miss Congeniality (movie). Sandra Bullock stars as a clumsy and tomboyish FBI agent undercover at a beauty pageant. Charming in a " see it once " kind of way. Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt, Candice Bergen, and William Shatner help out. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (6) The Mummy Returns (movie). Brendan Fraser also returns in this 2001 sequel to the loud-shallow-and-fun 1999 effort. With Rachel Weisz as the inevitably reincarnated Egyptian princess. The Rock is also involved as what’s left of Imhotep runs wild through London. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Small Ball: A Little League Story. Following the fortunes of a squad of 11- and 12-year-olds from small-town Northern California as they battle their way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for the 2002 Little League World Series. To be repeated tonight at midnight. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

11:00 (2) Colorvision: Love. Reporter Kate Riggs " looks for true love in two segments . . . that take her into the throws [sic] of an interracial speed-dating service. " But that’s secondary to tonight’s selection of short films: " Mouse, " in which a couple try to sort out their relationship while being pestered by a mouse; " Ester, Baby, and Me, " which chronicles the sometimes funny trials of an interracial couple having their first baby; " Morning Breath, " in which a young man confronts his fear of finding love; and " Guileless Guile, " whose subject is an oblique eternal triangle. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 18

3:00 (6) Basketball. NBA conference-quarterfinal action.

8:00 (44) Sunset Blvd. (movie). Gloria Swanson swallows the scenery from this and several neighboring movie sets in Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic tale of faded Hollywood glory. Co-starring Erich von Stroheim and William Holden. (Until 9:50 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness. Helen Mirren returns to her compelling portrayal of DCI Jane Tennison in this new PS series in which Jane tackles the disturbing torture murder of a Bosnian Muslim and winds up battling a Eastern European crime syndicate. DCI Tennison, like Mirren, is older in this series, and her male colleagues — none of whom, unlike Mirren, won an Emmy — still want her out of the department. But they’ll get over that. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Joyce Millman’s review begins on the Arts cover.) (Until 11 p.m.)

9:50 (44) The Unsinkable Molly Brown (movie). Just in case you missed the last three times they aired it. Spunky Debbie Reynolds stars as spunky Molly in this 1964 musical from Meredith Willson’s Broadway show. Co-starring Harve Presnell, who went on from this (his first film) to a major role in Paint Your Wagon (1969) to a part on Ryan’s Hope and, shall we say, more minor roles in everything from Fargo to Legally Blonde. (Until midnight.)

1:00 a.m. (2) The American Experience: Emma Goldman. Repeated from last week. A new bio of Red Emma, the Russian-born anarchist labeled " the most dangerous woman in America " by none other than J. Edgar/Mary Hoover. (Until 2:30 p.m.)

MONDAY 19

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Paris City Guide. Trekker Justine Shapiro, seemingly off the rigorous-trek beat for the season, cooks at Le Cordon Bleu, tours the Louvre, etc. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: Patriots’ Day. Back in 1775, the folks of Lexington and Concord decided they’d had enough of unwelcome British occupation, and they responded with armed rebellion. These were the first heroes of the American Revolution. In 2004, the folks of Iraq are doing the same thing in the face of unwelcome US occupation. But even though the British soldiers our militia ambushed along ur Route 2 were just as dead as the Army and Marine victims of the Iraq war, it’s different somehow. We guess. Perhaps it’s just a question of which side is wearing the funnier costumes. Anyway, this film by Marian Marzynski looks at neither situation but at the annual re-enactment of the skirmish on Lexington Green as it goes behind the scenes (vérité-like) with the costumed patriot and redcoat impersonators. If the schedule is to be believed, this will be repeated immediately at 10 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (10) The Restaurant. Rocco DiSpirito is back for another round of reality TV, but his eatery is $600,000 in the hole and the owners are clamping down. If viewers don’t find that little drama interesting, expect further plot twists such as a Donald Trump takeover, an invasion of rats, an earthquake, a terrorist attack, and a visit from the cast of Average Joe Polygamist. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 20

7:30 (2) La Plaza: El Tiante: A Red Sox Story. In honor of the new baseball season, La Plaza hauls out this profile of the highest-profile Latino Red Sox, pitcher Luis Tiant, who’s fondly remembered for his exploits against Cincinnati in the 1975 World Series. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: World in the Balance. A fascinating aspect of world population. If things keep going the way they are now (we add a billion people to the world population every 12 years), by the year 2050, the average age in the US will be 40, the average age in Japan, Europe, and Russia will be 50, and the average age in Africa and the Middle East will be 25. Is this significant? How could it not be? To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Tree Stories: Leaving a Legacy. Ali MacGraw, Val Kilmer, and Don Henley praise all nature and encourage us to preserve it for future generations. Yes, let’s. (Until 11 p.m.)

3:00 a.m. (44) Independent Lens: Ram Dass, Fierce Grace. Channel 44 is showing a lot of World War II stuff this week, so there was no prime-time airing for Mickey Lemle’s 2001 film about self-made spiritual leader Richard Alpert (who first surfaced when he was expunged from Harvard with Tim Leary for messing with LSD on university time) at age 70. (Until 4:30 a.m.)

WEDNESDAY 21

8:00 (2) Great Performances: The Dream. American Ballet Theatre does Sir Frederick Ashton’s Midsummer Night’s Dream adaptation featuring Ethan Stiefel, Alessandra Ferri, and Herman Cornejo. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. on Channel 44. (Marcia B. Siegel’s review is on page 12.) (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (10) The Most Outrageous Moments on Live TV. Has this been cleared by the FCC? (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) National Geographic: Inside the Vatican. We strolled around St. Peter’s earlier this year and couldn’t help being a tad bit sickened by the opulence. This less-critical TV tour also involves less walking and fewer guards running at visitors and yelling " Prego! Prego! " for no obvious reason. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Secrets of the Dead: The Shroud of Christ? and The Tomb of Christ. Those early Christians misplaced everything. Then again, it’s tough to keep track of shrouds and graves when you’re being tossed to hungry lions. The first hour considers the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin; the second sends archæologists out to locate Jesus’s burial plot. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (2) P.O.V.: Love and Diane. A " stereotype-shattering " film, shot over the period of a decade, about a crack addict (Diane) and her daughter (Love), who was taken into foster care back in the ’80s. Now 18, Love has her own child, and Diane is desperate to reconnect. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

THURSDAY 22

8:00 (2) Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution: The Empire and the Kingdom. The conclusion. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: Son of al-Qaeda. The tale of Abdurahman Khadr, trained terrorist turned CIA informant. As a child, Khadr hung out with the children of his father’s best friend, Osama bin Laden, so murdering minions of the Great Satan came naturally. But then, things changed, and Khadr switched sides to the devil he didn’t know. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 2 and 4 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)