BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 25

8:00 [6] EVOLUTION | movie | David Duchovny and Julianne Moore battle for survival with the fittest, which have recently arrived on Earth via comet from outer space. We never knew that willful invasion was a valid evolutionary tool, but these days, we’re just happy ABC didn’t change the movie’s title to Intelligent Design. | Until 10 pm

5:00 AM [44] SOUNDSTAGE | Music from Ringo Starr and the Roundheads. To be repeated on Saturday at midnight. | Until 6 am

FRIDAY 26

8:00 [64] FOOTBALL | The Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Washington Redskins in pre-season play.

SATURDAY 27

1:00 [64] BASEBALL | The Minnesota Twins versus the Texas Rangers.

3:30 [6] BASEBALL | Since, unlike Major League Baseball, the Little League World Series is international, the US teams often lose, so we have our own championship game. Live from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, home of the Little League, Grit newspapers, and a whole lot of bears.

8:00 [12] FOOTBALL | The Indianapolis Colts versus the Denver Broncos in pre-season play.

8:00 [6] THE MEXICAN | movie | Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are teamed in this 2001 caper about a guy (Pitt) trying to get a cursed antique gun across the border from Mexico. It appears to be a mob job. The guy’s girlfriend (Julia) hates the mob and objects, but then she gets kidnapped by gangsters. And James Gandolfini plays out a truly regrettable finale to the whole affair. | Until 11 pm

SUNDAY 28

3:30 [6] BASEBALL | The truly global world championship game of the 2005 Little League World Series — also live from Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

MONDAY 29

8:00 [6] FOOTBALL | The St. Louis Rams versus the Detroit Lions in pre-season play.

12:37 AM[12] TENNIS | US Open highlights. | Until 1 am

TUESDAY 30

9:30 [A&E] DOG, THE BOUNTY HUNTER: "CATS AND DOGS" | As you may have heard, we’re trying to ignore broadcast TV as much as possible this week. So we’re breaking format and writing at length about a show you can see only on DVD or cable. (Granted, a sane person would watch this one only once, but that’s one more time than any sane person could sit through an André Rieu concert.) Here we have the more-or-less cinéma-vérité exploits of Duane "Dog" Chapman, a bail bondsman and (when his suspects skip) bounty hunter. Dog lives in Hawaii. He’s an ex-biker, an ex-con (accomplice to first-degree murder), a Born Again, and (in a professional-wrestling sort of way) one scary dude: leather vest, steel armband, tattoos, shoulder-length blond hair, a braid, feathers — the whole WWF costume. You owe it to yourself (and your sense of 21st-century culture) to see this guy. He runs his business with his wife, Beth Smith, no lightweight herself, who in deference to the possibility that Dog might take offense and track us down we’ll describe as a fine figure of a woman. The Dog Chapmans have pups (three out of a total of 12 sired by Duane) whose domestic normality provides a demeaning but somehow charming counterpoint to the macho family business ethic. In each episode, Dog and (usually) Beth and their posse (Dog’s first and third sons from a previous marriage and a career bondsman named Tim) head out to retrieve some sorry sap who didn’t show up in court. Dog and company, dressed in black for intimidation, hit the road in gargantuan SUVs (Beth at one wheel, Dog driving the other), often with no apparent plan beyond stopping at a school to deliver some anti-drug intimidation. No problem, Dog is not only scary and an expert braggart, he’s wily.

In the episode we caught, he ran his prey to ground by calling him on the phone and pretending to be a wrong number. Armed with a verified phone number (okay, the guy slipped and said, "No, this is Joe’s house," and there could be only one Joe in Hawaii), Dog consulted a reverse phone directory and got the perp’s address. Ah, but things don’t always go smoothly, even for the Dog. There was no street sign. Dog and Beth spent most of the episode driving around Hawaii asking UPS guys for directions. After repeatedly getting lost — all the while taking themselves very seriously and talking very tough — the posse stumbled upon the fellow they’d been looking for (shirtless, like all the bad guys on Cops) amid a cluttered roadside tableau that seemed to involve a small house, other shirtless men, and a lot of broken automobiles. Dog sprang into action, leapt from the SUV, and menaced the stunned, bare-chested 240-pound bail jumper with . . . a hand-held fire extinguisher. (Dog says he believes in guns but not bullets.) Turns out, poor Joe’s wife misinterpreted some official papers and Joe didn’t even know he was meant to go to court. Joe also turned out to be a nice guy — a family man. After Beth and Joe’s wife embraced like a pair of long-lost grizzlies, he even directed the navigationally impaired posse to the local police station. And justice was served without mishap.

Okay, it’s a hoked-up pseudo reality show. It’s silly — one could say pathetic in its scope. But it does qualify as found art. Do these people realize how funny they are? No independent director, no matter how drugged-up or eccentric, could have made this show up. Like Channel 2 (and much of cable), the A&E network doesn’t have an especially regular weekly schedule, but Dog, the Bounty Hunter seems to show up most Tuesday evenings. | Until 10 pm

12:37 AM [12] TENNIS | US Open highlights. | Until 1 am

WEDNESDAY 31

12:37 AM [12] TENNIS | US Open highlights. | Until 1 am

THURSDAY 1

8:00 [2] IN SEARCH OF SHAKESPEARE: A TIME OF REVOLUTION | Historian Michael Wood explores the Bard’s life and legend. In this, we cover the early years, schooling, things little Willie’s father did to disgrace the family, and the playwright’s shotgun teenage wedding. All true? Whatever. | Until 9 pm

Giants in pre-season play.

9:00 [2] WATERGATE PLUS 30: SHADOW OF HISTORY | A new look back at the Nixon cover-up scandal. For those of you who missed it or have been misled by all the recent anti–Deep Throat propaganda, believe this: Richard Nixon was a crook. | Until 11 pm

12:37 AM [12] TENNIS | US Open highlights. | Until 1 am