BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 26

12:30 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. The women’s soccer final (live!), the women’s water-polo final, and, in gymnastics, the "rhythmic competitions." (Until 4 p.m.)

8:00 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. Men’s finals in the long jump, the 400-meter hurdles, and the 200 meters. Plus women’s springboard diving, the men’s triathlon, and women’s volleyball semifinals. (Until midnight.)

9:00 (6) Charlie’s Angels (movie). Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore re-create the roles from the 1970s TV series about three women undercover detectives. Except these three know more martial arts. (Until 11 p.m.)

12:35 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. Synchronized-swimming team competition and wrestling finals. (Until 2 a.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (movie). Charles Laughton plays Quasimodo to Maureen O’Hara’s Esmeralda in the as-yet-unmatched 1939 edition of this Victor Hugo weeper. (Until 2:45 a.m.)

2:00 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. A replay of prime-time events. (Until 6 a.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Counting Crows and Shelby Lynne. (Until 6 a.m.)

FRIDAY 27

12:30 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. USA in a men’s basketball semifinal (assuming we managed to tough it out against the Duchy of Grand Fenwick), the women’s 10,000-meter final (live!), horse jumping, and canoeing finals. (Until 4 p.m.)

8:00 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. Finals in the men’s pole vault and 110-meter hurdles and the women’s long jump, javelin, and 4x100-meter relay. Plus men’s platform diving, the team synchronized-swimming final, and rhythmic gymnastics. (Until midnight.)

8:00 (64) Football. The Washington Redskins versus the St. Louis Rams in pre-season play.

12:25 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. A men’s volleyball semifinal, women’s mountain biking, and freestyle wrestling. (Until 2 a.m.)

12:30 a.m. (2) Rain (movie). A 1932 adaptation of a play by John Colton starring Joan Crawford as hooker Sadie Thompson exiled to (we’re not kidding) Pango Pango. Walter Huston stars as the hypocritical missionary who reforms her, then ruins her. Pretty sordid stuff for 1932 . . . or for Pango Pango, for that matter. (Until 2:05 a.m.)

2:00 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. A replay of prime-time events. (Until 6 a.m.)

SATURDAY 28

Noon (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. The men’s basketball final (live! but unlikely to draw high ratings in the States), the women’s volleyball final (live!), and freestyle wrestling and canoeing (those are separate events). (Until 6 p.m.)

6:00 (2) The Legacy of Jim Croce. A repeated fundraising special devoted to Big Jim . . . or Old Jim . . . or the Late Great Jim. (Until 7 p.m.)

8:00 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. The finals in the men’s javelin, 800 meters, 5000 meters, 4x400-meter relay, and 4x100-meter relay and the women’s high jump, 1500 meters, and 4x400-meter relay. (Until midnight.)

8:00 (12) Football. The Pats versus the Carolina Panthers in pre-season play.

10:00 (2) IT: A Phish Concert Special. Another repeat — Phish in concert in Limestone, Maine, in 2003. (Until midnight.)

12:30 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. Men’s mountain biking and the freestyle-wrestling final. (Until 2 a.m.)

2:00 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. A replay of prime-time events. (Until 6 a.m.)

3:30 a.m. (2) Fiesta in the Sky. Just as Becca, the winsome blonde, and her cocker-spaniel pup Rufus were about to land their hot-air balloon in the playground, two scaly-faced dry-wall contractors leapt into the basket and grabbed the controls. (Until 4 a.m.)

SUNDAY 29

10:00 a.m. (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. The men’s marathon (live!), the men’s water-polo final, boxing finals, individual rhythmic-gymnastics finals, and the men’s handball final. (Until 6 p.m.)

Noon (2, 44) Viewer Favorites. Now it’s unlikely that WGBH has many viewers left — at least for this month, and those that do tune in have undoubtedly been enticed by the likelihood of catching the time-honored hot-air-balloon documentary Fiesta in the Sky and not by the unexciting roster of oldies concerts. Nonetheless, André Rieu fans (and damn you to hell, by the way) rejoice. WGBH is devoting its entire afternoon to what it thinks you like best. (Until 11 p.m. on Channel 2; until midnight on Channel 44.)

6:30 (6) Baseball. The Little League World Series World Championship Game. (Until 9 p.m.)

7:00 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. The closing ceremony, in which IOC officials confess that they accidentally put 2005 on the tickets and the mayor of Athens holds a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the new highway to the Olympic Village. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Tomorrow Never Dies (movie). A 1997 latter-day Bond adventure with Pierce Brosnan doing a pretty good 007 opposite Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, and Teri Hatcher. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

11:35 (10) The 2004 Summer Olympics. A replay of the day’s events, plus the hot-air-ballooning final (live!) (Until 3:30 a.m.)

Midnight (2) Pygmalion (movie). Leslie Howard directed himself and Wendy Hiller in this 1938 adaptation of G.B. Shaw’s rags-to-diction story. (Until 1:40 a.m.)

1:00 a.m. (44) Mystery: Inspector Morse: The Infernal Serpent. Just before he was set to drop an academic bombshell with his speech about the environment, the famous scientist was murdered. Morse and his buddy Lewis investigate, and they uncover some quite unscientific behavior. To be repeated at 4 a.m. on Channels 2 and 44. (Until 3 a.m.)

1:40 a.m. (2) La règle du jeu (movie). That’s The Rules of the Game to you patriots. Jean Renoir’s classic 1939 spoof of the rich and French. (Until 3:30 a.m.)

3:30 a.m. (2) Fiesta in the Sky. "We’ve been skyjacked!" cried Becca the winsome blonde, but nobody could hear her over the roar of the wind that was quickly carrying the hot-air balloon — and Becca, Rufus, and her abductors — out to sea. (Until 4 a.m.)

MONDAY 30

8:00 (6) Football. The Tennessee Titans versus the Dallas Cowboys in pre-season play.

8:00 (44) PBS Convention Coverage: A NewsHour Special Report — The Republicans. NewsHour host Jim Lehrer and his team (Gwen Ifill, Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner, and Terry Smith) will offer three hours nightly of the farce from Madison Square Garden. Will there be a fake terrorist attack or just a lot of hollow reported threats? (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) The Trial (movie). Orson Welles’s 1962 adaptation of Franz Kafka’s futuristic look at the criminal-justice system under John Ashcroft. Tony Perkins stars. (Until 3 a.m.)

TUESDAY 31

7:30 (2) Viewer Favorites: Deconstructing the Autoharp, Unhand Me, You Cad (A Revival)!, and Lost Cannibals of Nova Scotia. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) PBS Convention Coverage: A NewsHour Special Report — The Republicans. In an unexpected move, Bush names Ralph Nader as his running mate. Ralph, flattered by the attention, accepts. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (6, 10, 12) Republican Lies on TV. And this time they didn’t pay off a network news team. The GOP convention, nightly here at 10 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (44) Nova: 18 Ways To Make a Baby. Infertile (and same-sex) couples have more options for acquiring kids than ever. A survey of the possibilities. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m. on Channels 2 and 44. (Until 2 a.m.)

3:00 a.m. (44) P.O.V.: Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam and The Sixth Section. Two films focusing on Hispanic issues and culture. The first, by Charley Trujillo and Sonya Rhee, recounts the experiences of Mexican-American men fighting in Vietnam. The second follows modern-day immigrants from a Mexican village to upstate New York, where they move to seek their fortunes. (Until 4 a.m.)

WEDNESDAY 1

8:00 (2) Lucille Ball: Finding Lucy. Old clips and interviews recap the career of America’s first TV sweetheart. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) PBS Convention Coverage: A NewsHour Special Report — The Republicans. Responding to warnings that the British are coming to capture Minutemen munitions stored in Concord, Bush and the gang declare a permanent state of emergency and declare the election over — forever. (Until people wise up and get this guy out of office.)

9:30 (2) Great Performances: Elton John at the Royal Opera House. In 2002, Elton wanted to raise scholarship money for the Royal Academy of Music, and he probably did despite the high overhead of renting out the Royal Opera House, hiring a 90-piece orchestra, and amassing a choir of Academy students. And all just to perform "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me." (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:00 (6, 10, 12) More Republican Lies. These people have lots of sham but no shame. (Until 11 p.m.)

2:30 a.m. (44) Fiesta in the Sky. We were afraid the manuscript was never finished, but in the end, it all worked out. The stiff breeze carried the hot-air balloon within earshot of Fantasy Island, where Becca, half deaf from the relentless wind, thought she heard Hervé Villechaize shout, "Deflate! Deflate!" That gave her the idea of puncturing the balloon with her car keys while her abductors slept. Slowly, the waning balloon drifted down on the nearby Island of Dr. Moreau, where mutant man beasts overpowered the abductors, buried them in recycled plastic shrimp, and caused them to be eaten by lizards. Becca, meanwhile, became the mutants’ queen long enough to book a flight back home to Altoona, Pennsylvania, where she and Rufus, her cocker spaniel, live next door to the slightly nerdy Rodney quietly awaiting their next adventure. (Until 3 a.m.)

5:30 a.m. (44) Fiesta in the Sky. We kid about Fiesta in the Sky, but what’s this show really like? It’s like a bunch of peculiar people pointing out the mechanical virtues of their hot-air balloons. And a lot of colorful (and truly boring) footage of colorful balloons in flight. Watch sometime. Okay, don’t. (Until 6 a.m.)

THURSDAY 2

6:45 (5) Football. The Pats versus the Jacksonville Jaguars in pre-season play.

7:30 (2) Basic Black: The Youth Vote. If only the 18-to-34-year-old crowd would vote — for Kerry. Darren Duarte holds a round-table discussion on how to get that to happen with Tito Jackson of Dunk the Vote, George Greenidge of the National Black College Alliance, and Boston Vote’s Atiya Dangleben. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (44) PBS Convention Coverage: A NewsHour Special Report — The Republicans. Just kidding. The British aren’t coming. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Wide Angle: Sahara Marathon. Something completely different. And there’s a story that goes with it. The Sahrawi people (of the Sahara) put up with years of bloodshed as they resisted Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara (in 1976). For 10 years, they’ve been waiting for sovereignty, but the referendum never gets off the ground. How to draw attention to this virtually invisible standoff? They hold a marathon race across the Sahara. This report focuses on two runners and the difficulties of going fast through sandstorms. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (6, 10, 12) Still More Republican Lies. Hey, let’s get this straight right from the start: if you vote for any of these people, you have blood on your hands and democracy’s demise on your conscience. (Until 11 p.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Peter Cetera and Amy Grant. (Until 6 a.m.)