BY CLIF GARBODEN

FRIDAY 22

8:00 [64] BARBERSHOP | movie | Fox-TV brags about the most unlikely things. This, we’re told, is the "world broadcast premiere" showing of this 2002 black (as in African-American) comedy set in a Chicago barbershop. Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson, and Cedric the Entertainer star. | Until 10 pm

9:00 [2] FRONTLINE: DIET WARS | There are now more ways to lose weight than there are to get fat, and still the nation lumbers around like so many million tubs of lard. Americans spend $40 billion a year trying to shed pounds, so it’s obvious that people care, but the diet strategies out there are so varied that they contradict one another. Correspondent Steve Talbot tours the expanding world of reduction. To be repeated tonight at 1 am. | Until 10 pm

9:00 [44] AMERICAN MASTERS: BOB NEWHART: UNBUTTONED | Repeated from last week. The "unbuttoned" reference harks to the 1960s when the droll comic marketed his act as "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." This show looks at his career from stand-up to TV star. Plus interviews with the comics he inspired. To be repeated on Saturday at midnight on Channel 2. | Until 10 pm

10:00 [2] FRONTLINE: DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION | Sometimes what cures you can kill you. And we presume that’s where the federal Food and Drug Administration comes in. But sometimes those gatekeepers approve things that end up being harmful or deadly. A look at the process, and the role that drug companies play in it. To be repeated tonight at 2 am. | Until 11 pm

10:00 [44] ON STAGE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER: THE 2002 MARK TWAIN PRIZE — BOB NEWHART | Repeated from last week. An excellent all-star tribute. To be repeated on Saturday at 1 am on Channel 2. | Until 11:30 pm

SATURDAY 23

3:00 [25] BASEBALL | The Seattle Mariners versus the Cleveland Indians.

4:00 [6] BASKETBALL | The Detroit Shock versus the Seattle Storm in WNBA play.

8:00 [6] NOTTING HILL | movie | Julia Roberts meets Hugh Grant. What can go wrong? She’s a big American movie star; he’s a humble British bookstore owner. But they seem to get along. A pleasant 1999 comedy. Catch Rhys Ifans as the scene-stealing flat-mate Spike. | Until 11 pm

8:00 [44] THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR | movie | The 1968 and not the 1999 version, with Steve McQueen as the audacious bank robber and Faye Dunaway as the insurance investigator who nabs the gentleman bandit. Directed by Norman Jewison and filmed partly in Boston. | Until 10 pm

10:00 [44] SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS | movie | Sometimes (often, in fact) Internet research yields collateral results that are more interesting than what you were looking for. A simple Internet Movie Database query for this 1957 drama turned up a 1994 Hong Kong effort called Law meng goh law fong, which has been translated as The Sweet Smell of Death and The Sweet Smell of Love. Ah, that inscrutable East. Anyway, this is director Alexander Mackendrick’s story of a New York newspaper columnist’s underhanded efforts to stop his sister from marrying a jazz musician. Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Martin Milner (as the thwarted groom) star. | Until 12:03 am

11:00 [2] SOUNDSTAGE | John Mayer and Buddy Guy, part two.

12:03 am [44] SOUNDSTAGE | The Wallflowers | Until 1 am

SUNDAY 24

9:00 [2] MYSTERY!: INSPECTOR MORSE: DECEIVED BY FLIGHT | John Thaw plays Morse in this one, in which the inspector, with some expert help, tries to pin a double stabbing on a suspicious car dealer played by Patrick Malahide. To be repeated tonight at midnight. | Until 11 pm

9:00 [12] MARTIN AND LEWIS | movie | That’s Dean and Jerry, not Mary and Meriwether. The behind-the-scenes unpleasantness and all surrounding the early-TV comedy duo. With Will & Grace’s Sean Hays well cast as Jerry Lewis and Jeremy Northam as Deano. Trivia question: what was the name of the $5 milkshake served to Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction? | Until 11 pm

9:00 [44] WHALE RIDER | movie | This is WGBH/WGBX’s big thing for the week . . . month . . . possibly the summer, though it’s been in theaters everywhere. It’s a coming-of age adventure with a twist based on a novel by Maori writer Witi Ihimaera that’s set among the Ngati Kanohi people of New Zealand. Keisha Castle-Hughes took down a 2004 Oscar nomination for Best Actress. To be repeated tonight at 1 am, and at 2 am on Channel 2, and at 4 am on Channels 2 and 44, and on Wednesday at 9 pm on Channel 2. | Until 11 pm

MONDAY 25

10:00 [2] P.O.V.: THE BROOKLYN CONNECTION | The really interesting stuff never makes the history books. This film, based on a 2004 book by Stacy Sullivan called Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the US in the Kosovo War, tells the story of Kosovar-Albanian Florin Krasniqi, who does run a roofing company in Brooklyn. He also raised $30 million to smuggle guns into Kosovo during the war there in the late 1990s. | Until 11 pm

2:00 am [44] HISTORY DETECTIVES: CHEROKEE BIBLE | SLAVE BANJO | UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS | The topics under investigation tonight . . . er , this morning include a Bible translated into a written language invented by the Cherokee Indian Sequoia. Back in the 1830s, the Cherokee lived in the American Southeast. They adapted well to the white invaders’ ways and developed a written language, but the US government sent them west (along the infamous Trail of Tears) and they ended up in Oklahoma. Also on hand, a banjo that may once have been owned by a slave and a family tree containing references to "United Empire Loyalists," i.e., descendants of the Tories who fled to Canada when the colonies won the Revolutionary War. To be repeated tonight at 4 am, and at 5 am on Channel 2, and, finally in prime time, on Tuesday at 9 pm back on Channel 44. | Until 3 am

TUESDAY 26

7:30 [2] LA PLAZA: CONVERSATIONS WITH ILAN STAVANS: GUSTAVO SANTAOLALLA | Santaolalla is a Mexican folk musician who produced folk-influenced rock bands. He also wrote the score for The Motorcycle Diaries. | Until 8 pm

8:00 [2] NOVA: SCIENCENOW | Sciencenow is some sort of Nova subset dealing with new technologies and hosted by Nightline’s Robert Krulwich. This evening’s agenda covers genetic keys to predict major diseases years before the happen (how comforting); the growing world of nanotech materials that will further miniaturize computers; the first private space probe; and dire predictions about future generations’ climate. To be repeated at 1 and 4 am on Channels 2 and 44. | Until 9 pm

8:00 [44] GLOBE TREKKER: SAN FRANCISCO CITY GUIDE | Trekker Justine Shapiro’s tour of the city by the bay includes cable-car rides, a trip to Chinatown, a trek to the Italian Quarter where the Beats lived, and tours of the Castro and the Mission districts. Along the way she gets involved in a guerrilla-art project and that most charming of all SF traditions, Critical Mass, where self-righteous bicycle riders tie up traffic, we presume in order to demonstrate how bad things would be if more people rode bicycles. | Until 9 pm

9:00 [2] WIDE ANGLE: BORDER JUMPERS | The border in question runs between Zimbabwe (which is unstable and is bad shape) and Botswana (where life is relatively good). Needless to say, Zimbabweans keep trying to jump the 300-mile, eight-foot electric fence that’s being erected. A personal look at this heated political situation. To be repeated at 2 and 5 am on Channels 2 and 44. | Until 10 pm

10:00 [2] SECRETS OF THE DEAD: THE SEARCH FOR THE FIRST HUMAN | Trouble is, he/she is a long time gone. But they found some bones in Kenya that are so old, they could be that fabled missing link. To be repeated tonight at 3 am. | Until 11 pm

WEDNESDAY 27

8:00 [44] BATTLEFIELD BRITAIN: THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN — 1940 | Father-and-son historians Peter and Dan Snow have a way of making military history meaningful. Tonight’s battle is the protracted Nazi air assault on Britain. Never so few, indeed. | Until 9 pm

THURSDAY 28

9:00 [2] GUNS GERMS AND STEEL: THE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS | Author Jared Diamond’s view of the forces of history continues with a look at Africa and how white settlers did well near the Cape but were physically unadapted to life farther north. | Until 10 pm

10:00 [2] A HOT DOG PROGRAM | Celebrating the wurst of America. | Until 11 pm