BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 15

8:00 (10) Will & Grace & Will & Grace & Will & Grace & Will & Grace. A four-show marathon. All repeats. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Wide Angle: The Saudi Question. Saudi Arabia is vital (with 20 percent of the world’s oil supply) but badly in need of reform. But reform is hard to come by. Wide Angle managed to get close to reform-minded Prince Turki al-Faisal and follow him to Britain for some top-level discussions. The BBC’s Mishal Husain anchors. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

3:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Alanis Morissette. (Until 4 a.m.)

FRIDAY 16

3:00 (44) Masterpiece Theatre: The Jury, parts three and four. Continued from last week. A compelling drama about the private lives of a British jury at the murder trial of a teenage Sikh accused of brutally murdering an Anglo classmate with a sword. Derek Jacobi stars with a raft of excellent Brit character actors. (Until 5 p.m.)

5:00 (44) Program About Unusual Buildings and Other Roadside Stuff. Repeated from last week. A visit to Long Island’s Big Duck, a Fishing Hall of Fame (shaped like a fish), and more. All from that master of celebrating the trivial but lovable aspects of American life, Rick Sebak. To be repeated tonight at 2:30 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 3:30 a.m.)

12:30 a.m. (2) The American Experience: The Kennedys: The Sons. Repeated from last week. The second installment of this Kennedy–clan chronicle looks at the lives, works, misfortunes, and legacies of JFK and RFK. To be repeated on Saturday at noon. (Until 2:30 a.m.)

SATURDAY 17

5:00 (10) US Olympic Trials. Track and field events. (Until 6 p.m.)

6:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre’s American Collection: The Song of the Lark. Alison Elliott stars in this adaptation of a semi-autobiographical Willa Cather story about a woman who grows up on the frontier and then becomes an international opera diva. (The "growing up on the frontier" part is the autobiography.) Co-starring Maximilian Schell, Tony Goldwyn, and Arliss Howard. To be repeated on Wednesday at 1 a.m. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (6) The Miracle Worker (movie). Rounding out our Alison Elliott Appreciation Night, we get this 2000 Disney remake of the classic film about bullheaded special-ed teacher Annie Sullivan and her equally bullheaded pupil, Helen Keller (played by Hallie Kate Eisenberg). (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (10) End of Days (movie). This faux dramatic title, worthy of a translated French melodrama set during the Jazz Age, actually has been applied to an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film about how Satan comes to America looking for a wife. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) A Thief of Time: An American Mystery Special. Repeated from last week. Another Tony Hillerman–novel adaptation featuring the Southwestern detective team of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee (Wes Studi and Adam Beach). In this one, the crime involves illegal archæology and Native American spiritualism. Peter Fonda and Graham Greene star. To be repeated tonight at midnight. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (6) ABC’s 50th Blooper Celebration. Five decades and they still can’t get it right. And they’re proud of it. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (2) Soundstage. Repeated from last week. Music from Ronald Isley and Burt Bacharach. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 18

6:35 (44) Broadway Danny Rose (movie). Repeated from last week. Nostalgia from Woody Allen, who stars as the director as a Broadway agent beset by murderous mobsters while out to reclaim the heart of fair maid Mia Farrow. (Until 8:02 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Evening at Pops. One-time Doobie Brother Michael McDonald joins Keith and the gang for "I Can’t Let Go" and some Motown. Then, just to keep everyone on his or her tapping toes, the Pops is visited by Cape Breton bluegrass/Celtic fiddle queen Natalie MacMaster. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:02 (44) The Manchurian Candidate (movie). Just as they’re about to release a remake (reset to the Gulf War, directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Denzel Washington) of a classic, WGBH pulls out the original to invite comparison. Hard to believe that this thoroughly odd story about brainwashed Korean War POWs staging a coup financed by Angela Lansbury could be told more believably or more powerfully than it was by director John Frankenheimer back in 1962. In fact, some of Frankenheimer’s sequences are so bizarre and deservedly famous that no competition is possible. (Until 10:10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Foyle’s War, Series Two: Fifty Ships. We were hoping there’d be more of these. Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks return as Inspector Christopher Foyle and his faithful sidekick, Sam, who patrol an English town during World War II. Tonight’s plot is damnably confusing to explain — something about a spy, a millionaire, an unexpected explosion at Sam’s house, a dead body on the beach, and looting. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (12) Dodson’s Journey (movie). Made-for-TV heartwarmer about a man (David James Elliott — no relation to Alison) whose family falls apart through death and divorce, whereupon he takes his daughter fly-fishing. (Until 11 p.m.)

MONDAY 19

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Tuscany. Trekker Megan McCormack heads to Florence and the Duomo, then tours the surroundings — Siena’s Palio (the twice-a-year horse race to honor the Virgin Mary, heavily bet and manipulated by the members of the city’s 17 districts, though the horses wind up doing what they want), the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the vineyards, and the jet-set getaway party spots. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) History Detectives: Dueling Pistols, and Evelyn Nesbit Portrait, and Little Big Horn Bayonet. We’re a sucker for anything about Evelyn Nesbit (turn-of-the-20th-century femme fatale of sorts in defense of whose honor millionaire lunatic Harry Thaw shot BPL architect Stanford White), so we’ll be watching this one, but these shows couldn’t be more disappointing if they were about tracking down grandpa’s pocket watch. Tonight’s objects up for authentication are 1) a pair of dueling pistols possibly used in the 1859 duel between Senator David Broderick (abolitionist) and California Supreme Court Justice David Terry; 2) a portrait perhaps painted by Howard Chandler Christy and posed for, possibly, by Nesbit; and 3) a bayonet that may have been at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. See, the things sound interesting, but the research methodology presented by the "History Detectives" is shallow and circumstantial at best — e.g., this color ink was popular in the mid 18th century, and records show it was sold at a stationery story in Pittsfield two miles from Herman Melville’s home and owned by a friend of Melville’s wife’s family, so the answer is yes, this pen could have been used to write Moby-Dick. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:30 (6) Funniest Families of TV Comedy. A Museum of Television and Radio special hosted by Faith Ford and offering family fun with the Bundys, the Simpsons, the Kramdens, and more. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) The American Experience: Zoot Suit Riots. A solid documentary on the 1942 tensions and violent outbursts in Los Angeles stemming from conflicts between sailors waiting to ship out to WW2 and Mexican-American teenagers in baggy suits. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 20

7:30 (2) La Plaza: All American Murders. This provocative new La Plaza edition focuses on the murders of three Hispanic heroin-addicted prostitutes from Worcester and asks whether the cops would have responded differently if the victims had been white co-eds. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude. If you want to sail the seas out of sight of land without a lot of zigzagging, you need to know where you are (east or west) of the Prime Meridian, which bisects Greenwich, England. People tried charting the stars and the sun and other things you couldn’t see when it was raining, and then a British clockmaker named John Harrison solved the problem with new technology — for which he was rewarded with the initial scorn of the scientific establishment. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 1 and 4:30 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: Coming to America. Host Alda explores new theories on where this continent’s first human inhabitants came from and how. Across the now discontinued Bering Land Bridge? Or by some warmer route? To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 3 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Indie Select: The Men Who Would Be Viking. A comedy-adventure documentary about the travels and travails of the crew of a replica Viking ship sailing to re-create Leif Eriksson’s AD 1000 voyage from Greenland to Newfoundland. First problem: where do you buy a Viking ship in Greenland? To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) P.O.V.: Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style. Wanna know why Washington politics is so screwed up? Because there are Texans in charge. Filmmaker Paul Stekler looks at two to-the-death political races in the Bushie State — one for state rep and one for governor. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 21

7:30 (2) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth: Sacrifice and Bliss. From that famed Bill Moyers series of interviews with the late scholar Joseph Campbell, who weaves a convincing thread of archetypes and motifs through the intersection of the history of storytelling and the history of culture. Tonight, we’re promised a discussion of the purpose of sacrifice and the need for purification. That we’re going to do this for a scheduled three hours and 45 minutes seems beyond mythological, but that’s what we’re told. (Until 11:15?)

9:00 (44) The Grateful Dead: The Closing of Winterland. The Dead’s 1978 New Year’s Eve show at the soon-to-be-closed Winterland Ballroom (the Jefferson Airplanes’ original stomping ground) in San Francisco. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 22

8:00 (10) Four Scrubs. A mini-marathon. All repeats. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Wide Angle: Women Rebuild Rwanda. As genocides go, Rwanda’s 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people in 100 days must be some kind of record. After a decade, that nation’s survivors are rebuilding, and the Rwandan women are leading the way in politics and commerce. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m., and on Channel 44 at 2 and 4 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Liza Marie Presley and Peter Wolf. (Until 6a.m.)