BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 17

7:30 (2) Basic Black: An Interview with Antwone Fisher. Host Darren Duarte talks with the subject of Denzel Washington’s 2002 movie about a violent Navy recruit who confronts his abusive childhood. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Frontline: The Plea. If the jury system is the strength of American justice, plea bargaining is the work-around that subverts it. At least, that’s what some legal experts contend, since 95 percent of all cases never see a jury. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

8:30 (6) Possible Basketball. The Los Angeles Lakers versus the Detroit Pistons in game #6 of the NBA championship series.

10:30 (2) Frontline: Burden of Innocence. With all this prisoner exoneration going on, it’s time to ask what happens to the victims of bad justice when they re-enter society — usually without any money. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY 18

Midnight (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Anna Karenina, part one. Repeated from last week. Tolstoy’s soapy tragedy comes to TV with Helen McCory in the title role of the neglected wife who has a passionate fling with a military man (the dashing Count Vronsky, played by Kevin McKidd). And no good comes of it. To be repeated on Sunday at midnight. (Until 2 a.m.)

2:00 a.m. (2) Globe Trekker: Mongolia. Repeated from last week. Trekker Ian Wright tours modern Ulaan Bataar (do they have touch-tone dialing yet?), scours the ruins of Genghis Khan’s headquarters, visits a monastery that somehow survived Stalin, and hums along with some throat singers (itself an experience worth the trip). (Until 3 a.m.)

SATURDAY 19

3:00 (64) Baseball. The Sox versus the San Francisco Giants.

4:00 (6) Basketball. The Detroit Shock versus the Sacramento Monarchs in WNBA play.

8:00 (6) Patch Adams (movie). Some of our greatest talents have no talent for choosing scripts, and the versatile and nimble-minded Robin Williams is Exhibit A. (Perhaps his early success transforming something as conceptually lame as Mork and Mindy put him on the wrong track.) Anyway, this 1998 semi-true yarn about a young doctor who treats people with humor — i.e., he dresses up as a clown — is no Moscow on the Hudson, though it’ll do until a truly awful movie comes along. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (10) Apollo at 70: A Hot Night in Harlem. A celebration of seven decades of amateur nights and cutting-edge music at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. Performers include Natalie Cole, Ashanti, Bob Dylan, Quincy Jones, James Ingram, Willie Nelson, Denzel Washington, and Arturo Sandoval. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip. The frequently seen Ken Burns documentary about Vermonter Horatio Jackson’s 1903 cross-country auto safari. Roads or not, here he comes. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (2) Soundstage: Fleetwood Mac. Mick, John, Lindsey, and Stevie team up for a concert of Rumors and stuff since. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 20

Noon (10) Wimbledon Preview Show. The volleys begin on Monday, but you won’t see any of it until Saturday June 26 unless you watch ESPN2. You can find the full TV schedule at www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/about/tv_usa.html. (Until 12:30 p.m.)

4:10 (44) The Night of the Iguana (movie). Repeated from last week. John Huston’s 1964 film from the Tennessee Williams play about a defrocked priest rotting out his life as a tour guide in Mexico. With Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and little Sue Lyon. (Until 6:15 p.m.)

6:15 (44) Anastasia (movie). Repeated from last week. Director Anatol Litvak’s 1956 film about a scam to pass an amnesia victim off as the last Romanov. Based on a play by Marcelle Maurette and starring Ingrid Bergman, who got an Oscar for her efforts. (Until 8:02 p.m.)

7:00 (2) Nature: Triumph of Life: The Eternal Arms Race and Winning Teams. The third and fourth installments of a six-part Nature series about evolution and the various means by which the fittest have survived. The first hour considers natural weapons and defense mechanisms that have helped sort out the predator/prey perplex over the millennia without eliminating all the food. At around 8 p.m., we switch over to look at teamwork. If two wolves are better than one, why not form a pack? To be repeated tonight at 2 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:02 (44) That’s Entertainment, Part Two (movie). All the MGM musical highlights that didn’t make the cut for the original film. Entertaining. (Until 10:15 p.m.)

8:30 (6) Possible Basketball. The Los Angeles Lakers versus the Detroit Pistons in game #7 of the NBA championship series, unless the Pistons have wrapped it up already.

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Anna Karenina, part two. The conclusion. If you like watching shows backwards, you can catch part one tonight at midnight. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (12) The Soul Collector (movie). Bruce Greenwood, Melissa Gilbert, and Ossie Davis star in a lighthearted 1999 TV-movie about the angel of death. And this one never plays chess. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:15 (44) Murder at the Gallop (movie). Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple (defined here by Margaret Rutherford) does the usual British-detective thing and gets all the suspects in a murder case to spend the weekend together. Did none of these people have lawyers? (Until 11:36 p.m.)

12:03 a.m. (44) Fiesta in the Sky. A hot-air balloon is a lot like Ronald Reagan. Or perhaps the other way around. The president who gave us the S&L scandal will have had at least two funerals by the time this column is published, but since we’re writing it on the National Day of Scorning, we had to show our disrespect. Like God in the old cliché, President Reagan showed his love for poor people by creating more of them. Instead of using a flag, they should have draped the guy’s coffin in the AIDS Quilt. (Until 1 a.m.)

4:00 a.m. (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Foyle’s War: A Lesson in Murder. Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks return with another atmospheric police story set against the backdrop of Blitzed England. Tonight, Foyle looks into the suicide of a man denied conscientious-objector status and a booby-trapped grenade intended (perhaps) for the judge who tried to send the kid to war. (Until 5:30 a.m.)

MONDAY 21

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Marrakech and Dubai City Guides. Trekker Megan McCormick visits the extremes of Muslim culture, from the ancient markets and classic hotels of Morocco’s Marrakech to the almost self-parody of modernity and conspicuous consumption of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) History Detectives: Civil War–Era Submarine, Red Cloud’s Pipe, the Edison House. A summer series returned from 2003 — for all we know with the same episodes. Hoping to capitalize on the fascination with the junk in people’s attics spawned by the Antiques Road Show, this series tracks down the truth about the stuff of legends. Did a New Orleans man’s ancestor really help build the Civil War submarine that’s housed in NOLA’s French Quarter? Did Chief Red Cloud really hand over his pipe to the Indian agent who banished his people to the Pine Ridge Reservation? Did Thomas Edison really build the house of some guy in New Jersey? Experience teaches that the questions are more intriguing than the answers. To be repeated tonight at 1:30 and 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) The American Experience: The Hurricane of ’38. The year 1938 was a bad one for the New England coast, thanks to a tropical storm from Africa that shot up from the Carolinas at an unprecedented 60 miles per hour. Seismographs in Alaska felt the fury, and lots of damage was done, especially to Rhode Island. To be repeated tonight at 2:30 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 22

8:00 (2) Nova: Secrets of the Mind. A survey of the work of S.V. Ramachandran, a brain scientist who studies people with extreme mental disorders in search of clues to how emotions and consciousness work. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (12) AFI’s 100 Years — 100 Songs. The list of movie songs is "top secret." The host is John Travolta. If the original theme from Shaft doesn’t make it, we’ll be upset. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: Hot Times in Alaska. Repeated from last week. G.W. Bush doesn’t want to hear about global warming because the truth might impinge on his family’s oil-based fortune, but it’s for real, and dramatic climate changes in our 49th state prove it. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 5 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 2 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Independent Lens: Daddy & Papa. A 2002 Sundance hit documentary that looks into the lives and the motivations of four male couples who’ve decided to raise children. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Nanga Parbat: Naked Mountain. Even the ninth-highest mountain in the world (Nanga Parbat in Northern Pakistan) started small, but how long ago? An international collection of geologists tackles the rockpile in hopes of proving it’s the fastest-growing mountain on earth. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (44) P.O.V.: Farmingville. A documentary from Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini about illegal immigrant labor, racism, resentment, conflict, and hate crimes set in . . . you didn’t guess it, Farmingville, Long Island. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 23

8:00 (2) American Masters: Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues. This has got to be worth skipping the back-to-back episodes of My Wife and Kids on Channel 5 to check out. Well, anything would be, but here we get old and rare performance of Hank plus his complete (though scattered) bio, and interviews with Hank Jr., Hank II, and Hank’s widow. Sure, Hank was a mess, but he invented and/or popularized several strains of country and pop that have made the world a better place. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America: The Shot Heard ’Round the World and American Crisis. A Revolutionary series. Tonight’s editions cover the Boston Massacre and the Battle of Lex and Con, then move on to Washington’s 1776 route from Brooklyn and surprise Christmas Eve return to Trenton. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 24

7:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with Anita Hill. Thirteen years ago, Anita Hill accused her former boss, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment. He got confirmed anyway, and she now teaches at Brandeis. Darren Duarte quizzes her about the lasting impact of that scandal. (Until 8 p.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage: Sheryl Crow, part one. It’s five o’clock in the morning, and all you wanna do is have some fun. This will be repeated on Saturday June 26 at 11 p.m. on Channel 2. (Until 6 a.m.)