BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 6

8:00 (2) Queen Victoria’s Empire: Engines of Change. A series looking back on the forces that made the world what it is today — from the Industrial Revolution, which crowded the underpaid into filthy urban settings, to visions of global domination/exploitation, which divided the world into ruling and conquered nations. (Until 9 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Sandwiches That You Will Like. One of those fun-and-trivial travelogues — this one touring the nation’s oddest and most popular meals on bread. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY 7

1:00 (44) Broadway: The American Musical: Give My Regards to Broadway (1893–1927) and Syncopated City (1919–1933). Most documentaries about theater grow old immediately because the oh-so-serious theater folk maunder on about themselves as if they were the only cultural forces on earth. Not so with this multi-part send-up of the American musical from producer Michael Kantor. Julie Andrews hosts a history of the American musical stage from its minstrel-show/Yiddish-theater beginnings through the present. Today’s editions cover Flo Ziegfeld’s commercial ascent and the jazz-age/Big Apple era that followed. Well worth watching. (Until 3 p.m.)

5:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Great Festivals 2. Repeated from last week. Another GT-anthology show touring celebrations around the planet — Carnaval in Trinidad, Italy’s Battle of the Oranges (during which the citizens of the town of Ivrea re-enact the ancient war that liberated them by throwing oranges at one another), Scotland’s Clanloddoch Games, and Mexico’s Day of the Dead. To be repeated on Saturday at 11 a.m., and on Saturday at 11 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 6 p.m.)

8:00 (64) Black Knight (movie). Wonderfully bad movie starring Martin Lawrence as an amusement-park worker transported back to the days of King Arthur. Couldn’t be dumber. (Until 10 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (2) Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: Coming to America. Repeated from last week. Alda recaps the latest theories on who first populated the Americas and how they got from wherever to here. Land bridge? Reed raft? Teleportation? Alien spacecraft? AARP tour bus? (Until 2 a.m.)

SATURDAY 8

1:00 (6) Basketball. The New York Knicks versus the Cleveland Cavaliers.

2:00 (12) Basketball. Tennessee versus UConn in women’s play.

4:30 (6) Football. The St. Louis Rams versus the Seattle Seahawks in NFC wild-card game #1.

5:30 (44) It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (movie). Sorry, can’t resist the obvious line: it’s a bad, bad, bad, bad movie. One of a group of early-’60s big-budget farces featuring a cavalcade of stars who became famous doing better material than this. Some sort of crime caper starring Milton Berle, Spencer Tracy, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, and Ethel Merman. Just plain zany. (Until 8:05 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Football. The New York Jets versus the San Diego Chargers in AFC wild-card game #1.

8:00 (10) Battlestar Galactica (movie). Actually, just three opening episodes of this remade sci-fi series, which debuts on January 14 on the Sci-Fi Channel. Way too complex to explain; if you want/need to know more, then you go to nbc.com and fight your way through the pop-ups and pop-unders and Java displays and overblown hypes for other shows to read the moving-target promo material for this show. A simple descriptive paragraph would have sufficed. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:05 (44) The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (movie). A well-intentioned 1958 film with Ingrid Bergman playing a British servant determined to do missionary work in China. There’s also a subplot about her Eurasian lover that made this movie very serious indeed under Eisenhower. With Robert Donat and Kurt Jürgens. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (2) In the Life: Mergers and Acquisitions. A by-request repeat airing of this monthly gay/lesbian magazine-format series’s examination of marriage in all its various forms. (Until midnight.)

4:00 a.m. (2) The Natural History of the Chicken. It’s a delight that anyone bothered to make this documentary compendium of cluck-cluck lore, legend, fact, and myth. Someday, it may replace Fiesta in the Sky as the perennial fill-in show on PBS. (Until 5 a.m.)

SUNDAY 9

1:00 (12) Football. The Denver Broncos versus the Indianapolis Colts in AFC wild-card game #2.

4:00 (10) Kenny Loggins on Ice. No comment; see Gershwin on Ice below. (Until 6 p.m.)

4:30 (64) Football. The Minnesota Vikings versus the Green Bay Packers in NFC wild-card game #2.

3:30 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Aristocrats, parts one, two and three. Worrying about breeding is its own reward. Just consider Paris Hilton. This three-part MT escapade is based on Stella Tillyard’s bestselling account of the busy and scandalous lives of Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah — four great-granddaughters of Charles II and his French mistress. Serena Gordon, Geraldine Somerville, Anne-Marie Duff, and Jodhi May star. (Until 8 p.m.)

4:00 (6) Gershwin on Ice. A few weeks ago, we ran afoul of the Andrea Bocelli Fan Club, which objected to our quip that the blind quasi-tenor shouldn’t be skating with the pros. (The organized hate mail was unbelievable; you’d think we’d insulted John Denver.) Just to continue the cruelty, we’ll point out that George Gershwin is dead and would probably skate even worse than Andrea. Coming next week: Spinoza on Ice: A Mind-Bending Spectacular! (Until 5 p.m.)

4:30 (12) Basketball. Kansas versus Kentucky.

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: He Knew He Was Right, part one. An Anthony Trollope novel adapted by the unstoppable Andrew Davies. In this, a man marries his heart’s desire only to have a false rumor of infidelity destroy his happiness. Bill Nighy, Geoffrey Palmer, Laura Fraser, and Oliver Dimsdale star. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (12) The 31st Annual People’s Choice Awards. After the ’04 election, you wouldn’t think this would be that popular a concept. Of course, they are taking a non-traditional (if not exactly mold-breaking) approach by introducing such trivial categories such as "Best Line" and "Favorite On-Screen Chemistry" and "Favorite Remake" to the usual "Most Popular Girl Actor" variety trophies. Voting was also done through Entertainment Weekly instead of staid old Gallup. But lest you suspect too much has changed, note that the nominees for Best Male Singer are Eminem, Josh Groban, John Mayer, Prince, and Usher. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Independent Lens: Fine and Doki-Doki. Two short films, one about a man whose lunch-hour chats with his co-workers persuade him to doubt the validity of his existence, and a second about a Japanese woman who decides to explore the lives of her fellow train commuters. (Until 10 p.m.)

11:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Featuring music by Sheryl Crow. (Until midnight.)

MONDAY 10

9:00 (2) The American Experience: Citizen King. According to Dr. Martin Luther King, 1963 was "the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children." Well, that never got very far, but the good intention of his "I have a dream" speech carried the American civil-rights leader through the last five years of his life as he tried to broaden his mission beyond race. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery: Foyle’s War, Series 2: Among the Few. Another an enjoyable (though difficult to summarize) tale of home-front law enforcement in WW2 England. Michael Kitchen stars as DCI Foyle. Tonight, his son takes off into the clouds of war while he and his driver, Sam (Honeysuckle Weeks), investigate a gasoline racket. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

TUESDAY 11

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Caetano in Bahia. A film by Juan Mandelbaum profiling Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso as he tours his home town of Bahia. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: The Boldest Hoax. In 1912, everybody who was anybody was an Englishman, so it stood to reason that the Missing Link was a Brit as well. At least, that made it easier for the scientific community to accept the discovery of Sussex’s Piltdown Man by amateur digger Charles Dawson. Four decades later, the find was declared a hoax. This show investigates the elaborate suspicions about who fooled whom and how. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m. and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Best Dives. A chance to see Trekker Holly completely surrounded by barracuda off Borneo, plus various swimmers (we suspect mostly Ian) dipping at the Caribbean, Micronesia, and the Great Barrier Reef. (Until 9 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Secrets of the Dead: Murder at Stonehenge. It’s not another Piltdown Man, but it is a headless corpse unearthed from a shallow grave on Salisbury Plain. A effort to solve the murder many years after the deed was done. To be repeated at 3 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Thursday at 9 p.m., also on Channel 2. (Until 4 a.m.)

WEDNESDAY 12

8:00 (2) Great Performances: Leonard Bernstein’s Candide in Concert. Few operetta readings are described as "rambunctious," yet critics did summon that adjective for this May 2004 production of Leonard Bernstein’s comic book. Starring Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone from Broadway and opera’s Paul Groves and Sir Thomas Allen — from Lincoln Center. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (44) The Civil War: War Is All Hell (1865) and The Better Angels of Our Nature. The end (of the American Civil War and Ken Burns’s magnificent documentary film about same) is here. Sherman tromps through Georgia, Richmond falls, Abe Lincoln is reinaugurated, Lee surrenders, and J.W. Booth guns down Lincoln. Plus some aftermath stuff. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Meeting Osama Bin Laden. "Skinny Binny?! Glammy O-Sammy! Oh, yeah, a heck of a guy — used to come in here and play the numbers. . . . Quite a temper, but I never saw him take a drink." And other first-person accounts describing the life of the murdering thug who played into George Bush’s greedy little hands. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 13

8:00 (2) Queen Victoria’s Empire: Passage to India. India was the far corner of anybody’s world until steamships and British colonialism made the whole planet smaller. The invasion of goods, values, and Brits resulted in culture clashes, which Queen Vic solved by imposing direct rule. And the rich were so mean. (Until 9 p.m.)

10:00 (2) One Man’s Journey into the Great Solitude. No details provided. Could be anybody. Whoever it is, he will repeat his performance tonight at 5 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Perfect Illusions: Eating Disorders and the Family. Following WGBX’s prime-time cooking line-up (Lidia’s Italian Kitchen and Jacques Pepin) is this profile of four women who developed eating disorders as teens. Coincidence? We trow not. (Until 11 p.m.)

The 525th line. Not much to say except: Jerry Orbach — a real shame. From "callow fellow" (The Fantasticks) to wise-cracking NY cop, his career was way too short.