BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 17

7:30 (2) Basic Black: A Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles. That is, an "encore interview with the groundbreaking filmmaker" of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) The Roman Empire in the First Century: Winds of Change. Emperor Nero’s rule is less than a complete success. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (12) Survivor: Palau. Why is this different from all the other Survivors? Wait a minute, the CBS Web site has the answer: "Everything the Survivors have come to expect will be wiped out in the first 10 minutes." Palau, for those who still care, is in the South Pacific. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Broadway: The American Musical: Tradition (1957–1979) and Putting It Together (1980–Present). West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Company, Cabaret, A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, Cats, Miss Saigon, Rent, The Producers, and The Lion King. West Side Story has almost more memorable songs than the rest of that list put together. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m., and on Friday at 1 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 18

8:00 (44) Nova: Saving the National Treasures. Repeated from last week. After more than 200 years, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are flaking and crumbling. This tells us what the National Archives is doing to remedy the situation. To be repeated on Saturday at 2 a.m., and at 5 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Monday at 3:30 p.m. back on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) American Experience: Kinsey. Repeated from last week. You saw the movie with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. Now here’s the documentary about the researcher who dragged America’s sexual habits out of the closet. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (2) The American Experience: The Pill. Repeated from last week. This logical follow-up to Kinsey looks back to the US Food & Drug Administration’s approval of a contraceptive pill on May 11, 1960. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

SATURDAY 19

2:00 (2) Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion. No cooking shows on Channel 2 or Channel 44 this afternoon, only the kind of Baby Boomer–oriented music programs that almost certainly mean fundraising. What’s more, they look suspiciously like the same programs WGBH aired during the last fundraising drive. This one, whose title is pretty much self-explanatory, is "presented" by K.C & the Sunshine Band and hosted by Frankie Valli, Karen Lynn Gorney (from Saturday Night Live), Deney Terrio, Barry Williams, and Irene Cara, with "a mix of new live performances and classic clips." To be repeated tonight at 10:10 p.m. on Channel 44 and then at midnight back on Channel 2. (Until 4:30 p.m.)

2:00 (6) Basketball. Clemson versus North Carolina or Iowa State versus Kansas State (joined in progress).

3:30 (12) Basketball. Maryland versus Virginia.

4:30 (2) John Denver: The Wildlife Concert. That is, a 1995 benefit concert for the Wildlife Conservation Society at which John sings "Rocky Mountain High," "Country Roads," "Sunshine on My Shoulders," and the rest of the usual suspects and talks about his commitment to nature. If he were alive today, would he be invited to sing at the Bush White House? (Until 6 p.m.)

6:00 (2) Superstars of Seventies Soul. A/k/a My Music: ’70s Soul Superstars. By any other name, a gathering of the "legends of 1970s Motown, R&B, disco, and soul" from a 2003 concert in Atlantic City. Patti LaBelle hosts; the Commodores, George McCrae, the Stylistics, Yvonne Elliman, Heatwave, the Trammps, the Emotions, Sister Sledge, and the Chi-Lites Reunion all perform. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (6) The Green Mile (movie). Frank Darabont’s 1999 adaptation of the Stephen King novel stars Tom Hanks as the death-row prison guard who has second thoughts about his job when a simple-minded seven-foot-tall black giant (Michael Clarke Duncan) convicted of killing two little girls moves in and starts performing apparent miracles. The original theatrical release ran 188 minutes, so this figures to lose three-quarters of an hour. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (2) In the Life: Historical Blindness. Okay, we’re confused: we thought this gay-and-lesbian-oriented monthly newsmagazine was, well, monthly, but it was on just last week. Whatever, Lesley Gore hosts this installment, which looks back at life before Stonewall: jazz musicians Billy Strayhorn and Billy Tipton, Left Bank artist Romaine Brooks, civil-rights advocate Bayard Rustin, and male impersonator Storme DeLarverie. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 20

2:00 (2) Liberty! The American Revolution. The Peabody Award–winning series from 1997 gets a fundraising afternoon in the sun. "The Reluctant Revolutionaries" is followed by "Blows Must Decide" at 2:30 p.m., "The Times That Try Men’s Souls" at 4 p.m., "Oh, Fatal Ambition!" at 5:30 p.m., and "The World Turned Upside Down/Are We To Be a Nation?" at 7 p.m. (Until 8 p.m.)

3:30 (12) Basketball. UCLA versus Stanford.

8:00 (2) Nature: Snowflake. Last week in this spot, it was rags-to-riches orangutan Kusasi; now we get the story of an albino lowland gorilla who was captured in Equatorial Guinea and spent the rest of his life — almost 40 years — in a Barcelona zoo before dying of a rare skin cancer. To be repeated tonight at 3 a.m., and on Monday at 2:30 and 8 p.m., all on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Island at War, part five. The soapy tale of life on a fictitious Channel Island during the Nazi occupation continues. "Philip and Zelda hatch a plan to escape the island." We’re still trying to catch up with James and Felicity and that German baron. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. on Channel 44, and at 4 a.m. on Channels 2 and 44, and on Monday at 1 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Independent Lens: February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four. That would be the four black college freshmen who on February 1, 1960, tried to sit down at the lunch counter in a North Carolina Woolworth’s. In this special celebrating Black History Month, we learn what’s happened to them since. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (44) Race: The Power of an Illusion: The House We Live In. The concluding part of this three-part series asks what "race" is if it’s not biological, and why it plays the part in society that it does. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

11:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Guided by Voices. (Until midnight.)

MONDAY 21

9:00 (2) American Experience: Malcolm X: Make It Plain. American Experience marks the 40th anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City with archival footage plus interviews with Maya Angelou, Ossie Davis, Alex Haley, wife Betty Shabazz, and daughter Attallah Shabazz. Alfre Woodard narrates. To be repeated tonight at 1:30 a.m., and at 3 a.m. on Channel 44, and on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Mystery! The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Deception on His Mind. It’s finally dawned on us that these are "encore presentations," since this is the one we saw five minutes of. Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) is on honeymoon in Mexico while Havers (Sharon Small) has to deal with a new detective (Emily Joyce) — a friend from college — who’s assigned to investigate an English seaside-resort murder. We still think Lynley should have married Havers. To be repeated tonight on Tuesday at 1 p.m. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

TUESDAY 22

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Conversations with Ilan Stavans: Jimmy Santiago Baca. Part Chicano, part Apache, Jimmy learned to read and write in prison and emerged as a poet. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: A Daring Flight. That would be the one undertaken by French aviator Louis Blériot, who just six years after Kitty Hawk took off from Calais and crossed the English Channel. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 3 a.m., on Channel 44, and at 4 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Wednesday at 1 p.m. on Channel 44, and at 10:30 p.m. on Channel 2, and on Thursday at 5 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Indonesia: Bali and Sulawesi. Trekker Shilpa Mehta surfs on Bali and gets a massage, visits the rice terraces at Ubud and makes a mask, climbs the volcano of Gunung Batur (cooking breakfast in a geyser on the way), attends the new year festival, then moves on to Sulawesi, where she attends a traditional funeral. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Wednesday at 3 p.m. on Channel 44, and on Thursday at 4 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: A Company of Soldiers. Shot in the weeks following our presidential election, this report follows the US Army’s 8th Cavalry Regiment in Baghdad. It’s no John Ford movie. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and at 5 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: Hot Planet, Cold Comfort. Something about global warming, the Great Atlantic Conveyor, and whatever George Bush is doing to Alaska. To be repeated tonight at 2 a.m. on Channel 2, and on Wednesday at 4 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

10:00 (2) The Harlem Globetrotters: The Team That Changed the World. Most of us remember the Globetrotters as good-humored basketball artists who’d tour the world beating the Washington Generals, but back in 1948, when it was for real, they defeated the then world champion Minneapolis Lakers (yes, that’s where they moved to LA from) and let the NBA know it needed to let the black guys in. To be repeated on Wednesday at 3 a.m., and on Thursday at 3 and 10 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 23

8:00 (44) Battlefield: The Invasion of Italy. The Allies’ assault at Anzio is repelled, and they turn to Cassino. To be repeated on Thursday at 1 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Touching the Void (movie). The 2003 film from Kevin Macdonald that tells how Joe Simpson and Simon Yates climbed a 21,000-foot peak in the Peruvian Andes and how on the descent Simpson fell and shattered his leg and how he survived. Worth a look if you didn’t catch it in theaters. To be repeated tonight at 1:30 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Battlefield: The Battle for Monte Cassino. The Allies bomb the sixth-century Benedictine monastery and take the hill, but at an appalling cost. To be repeated on Thursday at 2 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

THURSDAY 24

8:00 (2) The Roman Empire in the First Century: Years of Eruption. Not Vesuvius, as the title might lead you to think, but the spread of the Empire under Emperor Trajan. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: The Lost Prince, part one. An encore presentation of Stephen Poliakoff’s look at the youngest child of George V and Mary, brother to Edward VIII (the one who abdicated) and George VI (Elizabeth II’s father) but hidden away from the world because he was epileptic and had a learning disability. Definitely worth catching if you missed it first time around. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen. Bumped from Saturday afternoon on Channel 2, Lidia and Jacques still hold down their Thursday-evening slot on 44. Lidia and her son Joe make capellini with Alaskan crabmeat and stuffed calamari braised with fresh peas. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

9:30 (44) Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way. Jacques dives into the fridge and makes soup out of leftover vegetables, then moves on to lavash pizza, halibut on fresh polenta with pepper oil, fava beans with shallots, and hasty pudding with apricot sauce.