BY CLIF GARBODEN

THURSDAY 6

7:30 (2) THINKING BIG | ROSALIND WILLIAMS: TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND HUMANITIES | MIT historian Williams discusses the necessity for the sci-tech crowd to get in touch with everyone else’s feelings. | Until 8 pm

8:00 (64) BASEBALL | Divisional series playoff action.

FRIDAY 7

7:30 (2) THINKING BIG | MARC ABRAHAMS: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF SCIENCE | This guy is funny. Abrahams is the creator of the annual Ig Nobel Awards (for achievements that "make people laugh, then think"; see www.improb.com/ig/ig-top.html). The 2005 Ig Nobel was announced last night at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, but this show isn’t about that; it’s about Abrahams’s peculiar take on the usually humorless sciences. | Until 8 pm

8:00 (12) GHOST WHISPERER | Jennifer Love Hewitt gets a bad haircut and learns to talk to dead people. The show won’t really make you live longer, but it can really drag out an hour. | Until 9 pm

9:00 (2) FRONTLINE | THE O.J. VERDICT | Repeated from last week. A recap of the most sensationalized miscarriage of justice since Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and what it should have taught America about our pathetic state of race relations. | Until 10 pm

9:00 (44) NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SPECIALS | THE SINKING OF THE WARSHIP BELGRANO | We suspect it was scuttled by a crew embarrassed by its name. But seriously, Argentina’s General Belgrano was sunk by the Brits in 1982 during the Falklands War, and questions remain as to the righteousness of the attack. | Until 10:30 pm

SATURDAY 8

Noon (6) FOOTBALL | Cincinnati versus Pitt, or West Virginia versus Rutgers.

3:30 (12) FOOTBALL | Georgia versus Tennessee.

4:00 (64) BASEBALL | Divisional series playoff action.

4:30 (44) THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM | movie | Repeated from last week. George Segal delivers a pretty unconvincing performance as a British/American agent hunting neo-Nazis in a grimy West Berlin, where this was filmed on location in 1967. Screenplay was written by Harold Pinter, which made the delivery-challenged Segal’s job even harder. | Until 6:15 pm

6:15 (44) DIAL M FOR MURDER | movie | Repeated from last week. A premise that only Alfred Hitchcock could make plausible — never mind threatening. Ray Milland plots to murder his wife (Grace Kelly) using state-of-the-art technology, the telephone. From 1954. | Until 8 pm

7:30 (64) BASEBALL | Divisional series playoff action.

8:00 (44) GREAT PERFORMANCES | THE MAKING OF THE MISFITS | John Huston’s 1961 sad-cowboy movie was Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe’s last screen performances, and the production was rocky to say the least. Filmmaker Gail Levin looks behind the scenes. Featuring interviews with screenwriter Arthur Miller and co-stars Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy. | Until 9 pm

9:00 (44) THE MISFITS | movie | Fits right in after the 8 pm show. | Until 11 pm

SUNDAY 9

1:00 (12) FOOTBALL | The Pats versus the Atlanta Falcons.

1:00 (64) FOOTBALL | The Tampa Bay Buccaneers versus the New York Jets.

4:00 (64) FOOTBALL | The Philadelphia Eagles versus the Dallas Cowboys.

8:00 (64) BASEBALL? | If there are divisional playoff games, they will be broadcast on Fox tonight and tomorrow.

8:00 (44) BEYOND THE BORDER | A documentary about four sons of a Mexican family who move to Kentucky and confront every social and cultural obstacle known to man. | Until 9 pm

9:00 (2) MYSTERY | THE MURDER ROOM | part one | A P.D. James puzzler starring Martin Shaw as detective Adam Dalgleish. The title room is a museum gallery depicting brutal murders through British history. First the much-despised museum director, then a prostitute are killed — each in imitation of one of the grim scenes. To be repeated tonight at 4 am, and, on Channel 44, at 1 and 4 am, and on Monday, on Channel 44, at 8 pm | Until 10:30 pm

9:00 (12) THE HUNT FOR THE BTK STRANGLER | movie | A based-in-fact TV-movie (BIFTVM) about the elusive (for 31 bloody years) scourge of Wichita, Dennis Lynn Rader, who nicknamed himself BTK either after his bind/torture/kill murder technique or some long-forgotten fast-food sandwich. No stars seem to be associated with this effort. Most likely based on the book of the same subtitle by Robert Beattie (Nightmare in Wichita). | Until 11 pm

9:00 (44) ALIVE IN LIMBO | A film about young Arabs trying to grow up in war-torn Lebanon. | Until 10 pm

10:00 (44) P.O.V. | OMAR & PETE | Omar and Pete are ex-cons. Actually, neither has been out of prison for more than six months in 30 years. A look at their attempts to go straight. | Until 11:30 pm

MONDAY 10

8:00 (2) GREAT PERFORMANCES | FROM SHTETL TO SWING | Repeated from last week. A look at the wealth of children of Jewish immigrants to New York’s Lower East Side who made it big in American music by modernizing (and African-Americanizing) their Yiddish musical roots. To be repeated tonight at 1 am. | Until 9 pm

8:00 (64) BASEBALL? | Another potential divisional playoff game.

9:00 (2) GREAT PERFORMANCES | LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S CANDIDE IN CONCERT | The comic opera without the acting performed by Kristen Chenoweth and Patti LuPone and opera’s Paul Groves and Thomas Allen. All backed by the New York Philharmonic. To be repeated tonight at 2 am. | Until 11 pm

9:00 (6) FOOTBALL | The Pittsburgh Steelers versus the San Diego Chargers.

9:30 (44) AMERICAN MASTERS | CARY GRANT: A CLASS APART | A charming bio-doc of the charming leading man. With frank interviews with his ex-wife Betsy Drake about his affair with Sophia Loren, his use of LSD, and his alleged romantic involvement with Randolph Scott. Plus less gossipy interviews with directors Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor. | Until 11 pm

TUESDAY 11

7:30 (2) LA PLAZA | CONVERSATIONS WITH ILAN STAVANS: ANTONIA HERNçNDEZ | Mexican-born Hernández, currently CEO of the California Community Foundation, discusses Latino civil rights and the changing needs of America’s Latino community. | Until 8 pm

8:00 (2) NOVA | EINSTEIN’S BIG IDEA | Of course "big" is a relative term, depending on the weight of the idea and how fast it travels. On the 100th anniversary of Albert E.’s theory of relativity (and that E=mc2 business), we get John Lithgow narrating a dramatized explanation of how the whole goddamn universe works. Aidan McArdle stars as the frizzy-haired genius. To be repeated tonight at 4 am, and, on Channel 44, at 1 and 3 am. | Until 10 pm

8:00 (64) BASEBALL | American League Championship Series Game #1.

8:00 (44) GLOBE TREKKER | LA RUTA MAYA | Trekker Justine Shapiro tours the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala, visiting Mayan ruins, howling at howler monkeys, diving with dolphins, and climbing volcanoes. | Until 9 pm

10:00 (2) WIDE ANGLE | H5N1 | Whatever you do, don’t eat Vietnamese birds. A visit to Vietnam, where bird flu may already be evolving into a people-to-people virus. (Of course, if you don’t believe in evolution, you can’t get sick.) | Until 11 pm

5:00 am (44) INDEPENDENT LENS | PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC: ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE | Why is something this cool on so late? Once they were a doo-wop group called the Parliaments. Then leader George Clinton turned them into Parliament Funkadelic and mightily increased the ways it was possible to think about music. Influential, successful, and nuts; P-Funk did most things first. | Until 6 am

WEDNESDAY 12

8:00 (64) BASEBALL | National League Championship Series Game #1, and American League Championship Series Game #2. What are they talking about? Split-screen?

9:00 (2) HELEN OF TROY | Faces don’t launch ships; sailors do. It may be time to revise Homer. After all, the historical Helen of Troy may not have been the cause of the historical Trojan War. Correspondent Bettany Hughes visits Sparta and Turkey to retrace the steps of the original femme fatale. To be repeated tonight at 2 and 4 am, and, on Channel 44, at 1 and 4 am, and on Thursday, on Channel 44, at 9 pm. | Until 11 pm

THURSDAY 13

8:00 (25) BASEBALL | National League Championship Series Game #2.

8:00 (2) BATTLEFIELD BRITAIN | HASTINGS — 1066 | Saxon dogs; Norman frogs. After William invaded and beat up King Harold, Britain was never the same. Military archaeologists Peter and Dan Snow (father and son) explain and dissect the Norman invasion. | Until 9 pm

5:00 am (44) SOUNDSTAGE | Featuring music from Matrina McBride.