BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 23

9:00 (2) Wide Angle: Most of the News That’s Fit To Print. The reform press suffers persecution in Iran as well as in the US. A report on Shargh, a not-stupid independent newspaper in Iran and the target of serious censorship. To be repeated on Sunday at 2 a.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (10) E.R. The season opener. Hasn’t everybody in the cast died by now? (Until 11 p.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. If you thought Russell Crowe was a little hard to take as an actor, try him as a pop singer. Crowe returns to his first love (music, we’re assured) with a band called 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Plus, he does duets with Kris Kristofferson. Should be different. (Until 6 a.m.)

FRIDAY 24

10:00 (12) dr. vegas. The series opener for this Rob Lowe second chance. And yes, the title really is all lower-case, because . . . Anyway, Lowe plays Dr. Billy Grant, the house doc in a casino. Just so you can imagine how exciting this could be, here’s a quote direct from the show’s promotional page on CBS’s Web site: "Whether it’s a celebrity headliner who takes a header from the stage, an employee hurt on the job, or a desperate guest whose luck has run out at the tables, it’s a safe bet that Dr. Grant will see his share of unique medical cases." Just imagine the possibilities. (Until 11 p.m.)

2:00 a.m. (2) History Detectives: Charlie Parker Saxophone, Prison Plaque, and Koranic Schoolbook. Repeated from last week. Tonight’s "mysteries" involve an alto sax that might have belonged to bebop legend Charlie Parker, a plaque dug up in the ruins of a state pen in Philadelphia that’s dedicated to inmates who served in World War I, and a translation of passages from the Koran that belonged to a woman in Kentucky in 1800. (Until 3 a.m.)

SATURDAY 25

Noon (6) Football. Army versus Connecticut.

1:00 (64) Baseball. An exciting pennant-race contest yet to be named.

2:00 (44) Independent Lens: Worst Possible Illusion: The Curiosity Cabinet of Vik Minuz. A film about Brazilian-born conceptual artist Minuz, who uses his deep knowledge of photography and its history to create believable illusions. (Until 3 p.m.)

3:30 (12) Football. Alabama versus Arkansas.

3:30 (6) Football. Clemson versus Florida State, unless it’s Iowa versus Michigan.

3:30 (7) Football. Washington versus Notre Dame.

4:00 (44) P.O.V.: 90 Miles. A personal film by Juan Carlos Zaldívar dealing with his exile in Miami. Except this isn’t the usual anti-Castro refugee story. Zaldívar, who came over to Florida in 1980, was an ardent communist. Through news clips, family photos, and home movies, he explores the emotional turmoil that he and his father endured. (Until 5 p.m.)

5:00 (44) Love and Death (movie). Repeated from last week. Woody Allen’s 1975 costume comedy, with Woody and Diane Keaton confronting Napoleon during his invasion of Russia. (Until 6:25 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Cast Away (movie). Tom Hanks is stranded on a remote island with a volleyball named Wilson and some Fed-Ex packages. And it goes on and on and on and on from there. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:10 (44) Cheaper by the Dozen (movie). Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy star as the parents of the 12 Gilbreth kids in this classic 1950 PG tale of a large and eccentric clan thriving in turn-of-the-century America. (Until 9:37 p.m.)

11:00 (2) Soundstage. Featuring music from Counting Crows and Shelby Lynne. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 26

1:00 (12) Football. The Cleveland Browns versus the New York Giants.

1:00 (64) Football. The Chicago Bears versus the Minnesota Vikings.

4:00 (6) Basketball. First-round WNBA playoff action.

4:00 (64) Football. The Green Bay Packers versus the Indianapolis Colts.

4:00 (44) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Series 3: A Suitable Vengeance. Repeated from last week. Writer Elizabeth George’s mismatched Brit detectives — Earl of Asherton Thomas Lynley and poor-girl sidekick Barbara Havers (Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small) — investigate a spate of bloody murders among the upper crust. (Until 5:30 p.m.)

6:00 (44) Live from Lincoln Center: The New York Philharmonic Opening Night Gala. Repeated from last week. Lorin Maazel leads the NY Phil through the Beethoven Violin Concerto, with Maxim Vengerov, and Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (10) American Dreams. The season opener. At the end of last season, things were getting real ugly. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Series 3: Deception on His Mind. While Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) is off in Mexico on his honeymoon (having just married that woman with the long neck), Havers (Sharon Small, now free to find romance on her own) teams up with another inspector to investigate the seaside death of a young Pakistani man. Of course, the new partner does everything wrong, and Lynley returns with Ms. Long Neck to finish off the case. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Tuesday at 2 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (12) The Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (movie). Go with your demographic, we guess. Not many details are available, but we do know that Christine Lahti is pissed off and sets things straight. (Until 11 p.m.)

MONDAY 27

9:00 (2) History Detectives: Body in the Basement, Newport U-Boat, and Shippen Golf Club. Amid bombastic fanfare and an urgent bass line (just like the Channel 7 News Team), the History Detectives travel in a pack down memory lane ready and willing to take on any low-impact research looking for vague results. Here are tonight’s mysteries. A body found in a 300-year-old basement in Maryland. (Could it have been an "executed POW from an English Civil War battle?" What made them think of that?) A set of propellers on display in a Rhode Island hotel lobby. (Are they from a WW2 U-boat?) And a set of old golf clubs. (Did they belong to African-American John Shippen Jr., who competed in the second US Open, in 1896?) (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (6) Football. The Dallas Cowboys versus the Washington Redskins.

9:00 (44) Colonial House: The Reckoning and Judgment Day. The final two hours with the team of history re-creators trying to live the lives of 17th-century colonists in America. Tonight, they haul in the harvest and count up their successes, after which they return to the modern world with varying degrees of success. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Extreme Oil: The Wilderness. This series on oil greed continues with a visit to the soon-to-be-drilled Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Plus, we get to hang out in DC and meet the lobbyists, pro and con. Of course, as long as there’s oil involved, that moron Bush is going to find a way to make his cronies richer. To be repeated tonight at 5 a.m., and at 2 and 5 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 28

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Conversations with Ilan Stavans: Rubén Martínez. A talk with Pacific News Service editor Martínez, author of Crossing Over, a collection of pieces and journal entries covering the Mexican migration to the US. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Origins: Earth Is Born and How Life Began. Where are we? Where are we going? Where did we come from? Is anybody keeping score? Why are there so many of us? Whither? You know, just in general . . . whither? And more to the point, whence? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from the Hayden Planetarium and Museum of Natural History in New York guides us on a multi-part tour of the cosmos then and now, paying special attention to how our planet evolved from the free-floating dust and how life evolved on this particular dust kitten. Part one involves a lot of booming and crashing and colliding and big-banging; the second hour explains how some of the dust managed to become organic. To be repeated immediately at 10 p.m., and tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Wednesday at 2 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Cuba and Haiti. Trekker Ian Wright visits Havana, does the rumba, rolls some cigars, and visits the Bay of Pigs before hopping over to Haiti in the vain hope that it isn’t the benighted politically unstable backwater we all think it is. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: The Wonder Pill. By this, they mean a placebo — a sugar pill with no active ingredients. Some people are actually cured by such little nothings. Alan tries to find out why. (Until 10 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 29

8:00 (2) Nova: Origins: Where Are the Aliens? and Back to the Beginning. The story of everything continues with a look at the search for intelligent (to some extent) life in the universe. Besides us, that is. Included in this hour are the recent triumphs of finding planets outside our solar system and figuring out whether any of them could support life (as we know it or not). Finally, we investigate the Big Bang, using an "echo" from deep space as our evidence. Now all this is extremely interesting in a theoretical sort of way, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t give equal time to people who believe that the Big Bang was merely some oversized guy who looked like Charlton Heston snapping his fingers. Then there’s the truth, which is that our universe exists inside an air bubble in a slightly effeminate classical violinist’s martini. To judge by the latest reports, we’re about one sip away from oblivion. To be repeated immediately at 10 p.m., and tonight at 4 a.m. (preceded by parts one and two at 3 a.m.), and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Great Projects: The Building of America: Bridging New York. It appears there’s a bust of bridge builder Othmar Ammann (Swiss) in a bus station at one end of the George Washington Bridge. That’s all he gets. But Othmar built six of the 11 bridges that connect various parts of New York City to the rest of us: the GW, the Bronx-Whitestone, the Throgs Neck (what’s a Throg?), the Bayonne, the Triborough, and the Verrazano Narrows. Here he gets the credit he deserves. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 30

7:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with the New Power Majority. It took longer than in many major cities, but now even Boston is more than 50 percent non-white. And that means political clout if communities get organized. Host Darren Duarte leads a panel discussion with the New Power Majority, which is seeking strategies to do just that. (Until 8 p.m.)

9:00 (6, 10, 12) Presidential Debate 2004. That would be Kerry and that inarticulate idiot. Please let him hang himself, John. Then when he does, start calling him names and blaming him for everything that’s wrong in America.

4:00 a.m. (44) Puerto Rico Jazzfest 2003. Featuring performances by William Cepeda, Paquito D’Rivera, Makoto Ozone, Claudia Acuña, and Chick Corea — several of whom have an association with the Berklee College of Music. (Until 5 a.m.)

5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring 35th-anniversary music from Yes. (Until 6 a.m.)