BY CLIF GARBODEN

FRIDAY 13

8:00 (12) Elvis, by the Presleys. An Elvis junkie’s dream. Unseen performance footage, home movies, and family photos decorate intimate interviews with Priscilla and Lisa Marie about real life with the King. Plus interviews with Priscilla’s parents and Elvis’s first cousin, Patsy Presley Geranen. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (64) X-Men (movie). Mostly for Marvel Comics fans, perhaps the only audience population astute enough to sort out the mutant forces of Magneto (Ian McKellen) from the mutant forces led by Professor Charles Francis Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Such adaptations are treacherous, but this one manages to be coherent and appropriately stylized. With Bruce Davidson, Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), James Marsden (Cyclops), and Halle Berry (Storm). (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Repeated from last week. Long before June hooked up with Johnny, there were Sara, A.P., and Maybelle Carter, the country trio whose hard-luck sound serenaded people through the Depression. Old photos, recordings, and performance footage combine to profile these legends from Poor Valley, Virginia. Robert Duvall narrates. To be repeated on Sunday at 5 p.m. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) American Masters: James Dean — Sense Memories. Repeated from last week. A profile of the romantic legend snatched from his most significant period on film. Included are rarely seen screen tests and outtakes from East of Eden, Rebel without a Cause, and Giant. To be repeated on Sunday at 6 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

SATURDAY 14

3:00 (44) How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (movie). Repeated from last week. A 1967 film from the Broadway show, with Robert Morse re-creating the role that won him a Tony. Frank Loesser won a Pulitzer for this musical about a window washer who makes it to the top of the martini-culture corporate ladder. (Until 5 p.m.)

5:00 (44) Fiddler on the Roof (movie). Repeated from last week. Topol plays Tevye, the beleaguered Jewish milkman from the Ukrainian ghetto, in Norman Jewison’s 1971 adaptation of the relentless Broadway musical. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (6) Basketball. An NBA conference semifinal game #3.

8:00 (44) Some Like It Hot (movie). Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress up like ugly women and join an all-girl orchestra to escape mobsters out to get them because they witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Then they run into Marilyn Monroe, and with the help of an overconfident Joe E. Brown, all sorts of untenable romances ensue. Beautifully directed for laughs by Billy Wilder and co-starring George Raft, Pat O’Brien, and Nehemiah Persoff. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Ocean’s Eleven (movie). The 1960 Rat Pack caper movie on which the 2001 George Clooney remake was based. Same plot — 11 guys look to score big by knocking off five Vegas casinos in one night. Starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Cesar Romero, and Joey Bishop, and directed by Lewis Milestone. (Until 12:10 a.m.)

11:00 (2) Soundstage: Yes: The 35th Anniversary. Rick Wakeman, Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, and Chris Squire have been accentuating the positive, as it were, for more than three and a half decades. This show incorporates all their hits, plus some acoustic adaptations. (Until midnight.)

SUNDAY 15

3:00 (6) Basketball. More NBA playoff action. (Until 6 p.m.)

4:00 (64) Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace (movie). Why Fox would want to draw attention to this 1999 effort just as the new and improved finale of finales hits the theaters is the real mystery. The movie is its own menace, with wooden performances by Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, and Ewan McGregor. If the original Star Wars films triumphed despite shallow narrative and incomplete mythological intimations, this prequel only proves there was even less substance to the good old days when Anakin was in knee pants. (Until 7 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Miss Marple: What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw, part one. A mystery better known to Christie fans by its other title, 4:50 from Paddington, in which Geraldine McEwan as Jane Marple figures out why the police can’t find the body of the victim her friend Mrs. McGillicuddy saw being murdered on a passing train. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Channels 2 and 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Monkey Dance. A documentary by Quincy filmmaker Julie Mallozzi about the lives of three Lowell Cambodian-American teenage children of refugees from the Khmer Rouge as their traditional culture (the monkey dance) is overshadowed by their Americanized lifestyles. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Independent Lens: Vietnam: The Next Generation. Capitalism is still fighting communism in Vietnam, only without the booby traps and napalm. This film profiles eight farmers, students, artists, engineers, street kids, and entrepreneurs as they confront modern social and economic issues. (Until 11 p.m.)

11:00 (44) Austin City Limits. Damien Rice and Patty Griffin. (Until midnight.)

MONDAY 16

8:00 (44) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries II: Playing for the Ashes. Aristocratic inspector Thomas Lynley and his street-smart partner Barbara Havers (Sharon Small) investigate the death of a cricket star whose body is found in the ashes of a philanthropist’s cottage. When the cricketer’s 16-year-old son confesses, Lynley and Havers wonder who he’s protecting. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 9:26 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: The Quiz Show Scandal. Television’s first major impact on American culture was to betray it. Each week in the mid 1950s, viewers tuned in to quiz shows to root for their favorite "genius." Turns out, some of the geniuses were coached. The deception ended up being investigated by Congress. And since then, everybody assumes that every show is fixed. To be repeated tonight at 4 a.m., and at 1 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:26 (44) Mystery: The Inspector Lynley Mysteries II: In the Presence of the Enemy. The 10-year old illegitimate daughter of a radical labor minister and a conservative tabloid newspaper editor is kidnapped, and the ransom demand is that the father’s identity be made public. To be repeated tonight at 2:30 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) American Experience: Tupperware. An award-winning documentary about the plastic-container empire built by women for women in the 1950s. The products came from plastics engineer Earl Tupper (from Fitchburg, Massachusetts); the sales network was taken to the extreme by marketing entrepreneur Brownie Wise. There are no glass ceilings at a Tupperware party. Kathy Bates narrates. To be repeated on Thursday at 10 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 17

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Conversations with Ilan Stavans: Richard Montoya. Stavans talks with a founding member of the six-member social/political satire theater troupe Culture Clash, who came to national attention in 1988 with their play The Mission. Since then, they’ve done short films and TV specials on HBO and PBS, and recently they published their collective works. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: America’s Stone Age Explorers. Who got here first and where did they come from. For years, archæologists have thought the first humans in the Americas came across the Bering Straight from Alaska about 13,500 years ago. (Creationists can adjust their own math.) But new evidence has scientists thinking that our earliest settlers may have made it over from Europe and settled outside Pittsburgh. Which would explain many Western Pennsylvania folk customs. To be repeated tonight at 1 and 3 a.m. on Channel 44, and at 4 a.m. back on Channel 2. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (4) 40th Annual Academy Country Music Awards. Country music has an entire city to itself, yet it holds its awards show in Vegas. Go figure. Lots of prizes, plus appearances by Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Rascal Flatts, George Strait, and more. Watch with interest the last-minute Best Topical Divisive Song category, where the nominees are: "Pimpin’ My Humvee," "Support Our Loops," "Jesus Wants That Raghead Dead," and "The Ballad of Lynndie England." (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Globe Trekker: Egypt. Megan McCormick, the Shopping Trekker, gets to Egypt and heads straight for the Cairo bazaar, but from there her destinations turn antiquarian — Ibn Tulun (where Noah’s Ark is said to have run aground; the Great Pyramids at Giza; a balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings; and a visit to the Sun Temple of Ramses II. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 9 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Battlefield Britain: Naseby — 1645. Father/son historians Peter and Dan Snow retrace, relive, and re-create the decisive battle of the English Civil War, in which Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army put Charles I out of the sole-monarch business. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 18

8:00 (44) Battlefield Britain: The Boyne — 1690. How some really bad ideas sneak up on you. In 1690, Protestant King William of Orange took on Catholic James II for the kingship of all the Britains. After the bloody Battle of the Boyne — explained and explored here by father/son historians Peter and Dan Snow — some genius decided to divide Ireland along religious lines. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) American Masters: Ray Charles: The Genius of Soul. The many sides of Brother Ray: musical genius, drug addict, and womanizer. Somehow his ability to blend all the authentic American musical genres into something unstoppable trumps his shortcomings. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 a.m. on Channel 44, and at 5 a.m. back on Channel 2. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Blues: Piano Blues. Clint Eastwood, a blues-piano fanatic, explores the genre through vintage performance clips and live interviews and performances with Pinetop Perkins, Jay McShann, Dave Brubeck, and Marcia Ball. (Until midnight.)

9:00 (44) National Geographic Specials: The Secret of the Warship Belgrano. A Brit sub sank the Argentine ship General Belgrano, with 300 aboard, off the southern coast of Argentina during the Falklands War in 1982. Argentina claims the ship was on harmless patrol in neutral waters; the Brits claim they were being menaced. Perhaps National Geographic can sort it out. To be repeated tonight at 2 a.m. on Channel 2. (Until 10 p.m.)

THURSDAY 19

8:00 (6) Basketball: NBA Game 6 or Catch Me If You Can (movie). If no hoops, you get Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank W. Abagnale Jr., the real-life impostor who spent much of the 1960s pretending to be an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, forging millions of dollars in checks along the way. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State: Factories of Death (March 1942–March 1943) and Corruption April 1943–March 1944). Linda Ellerby narrates this devastating history of the world’s most efficient mass-murder scheme. In hour one, we learn how the genocide spread from Auschwitz to camps throughout Europe, where Nazi commanders embraced the idea with fiendish enthusiasm. The second hour looks at Auschwitz’s dual role as a concentration camp and an extermination camp and the profits made from prisoners’ belongings. (Until 11 p.m.)