‘Miss America’ shows up on cable
“The 2006 Miss America Pageant” (8 p.m. tonight, CMT) makes its cable debut. It’s interesting to note that 2005 marked the year that two of ABC’s most famous franchises – Miss America and “Monday Night Football” – migrated to cable. But tonight’s spectacle retains some of its network DNA.
Host James Denton is better known as Mike Delfino, the handsome, mysterious neighbor and love interest on “Desperate Housewives.”
CMT salutes pageants past with “Greatest Miss America Moments” (7 p.m.), a survey history of the competition’s early days as an Atlantic City boardwalk attraction; some tawdry and scandal-plagued years; its heyday as a TV event hosted by the genial Bert Parks, and awkward attempts to find the appropriate tone in a post-feminist epoch.
Happily, “Moments” omits some of the boneheaded programming moves of the post-Parks era, when ABC fobbed off the hosting duties onto awkward teams like that of Meredith Vieira and Boomer Esiason, or turning “Miss America” into a brand extension of “The Bachelor.”
Miss America will always have its fans and detractors.
Some see it as an exploitative flesh market and others as a solemn scholarship competition. To the rest of us, it’s a hoot.
And there is nothing that ails Miss America that a strong and steady host or hostess could not cure. It requires someone who personifies the pageant as Parks did for more than three decades.
Just as Dick Clark and Guy Lombardo owned New Year’s Eve, Parks was the face of this annual tradition. Until this Miss finds that steady captain, it probably will continue to lose its audience and relevance.
Every so often “Masterpiece Theatre” (8 p.m. Sunday, KSPS) becomes “must-see” TV. And now through Feb. 26, that will be the case.
The new adaptation of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens features a script by Andrew Davies (“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the 2001 version of “Pride & Prejudice”), more than 80 minor and major characters and Gillian Anderson in her first TV role since “The X-Files.”
Dickens’ sprawling drama of contested wills, endless legal squabbling, secret passions, indiscreet correspondences and unrequited love is presented in an opulent cinematic style. While simply too vast to recap here, the story is readily accessible to the casual viewer.
In addition to the principals, Dickens has populated “Bleak House’ with a colorful gallery of eccentrics like Miss Flite (Pauline Collins, “Shirley Valentine”). An older woman who has been waiting for her case to be resolved for decades, Flite lives in a disheveled garret, accompanied by caged birds named for the seven deadly sins and other more morbid concepts like “Death” and “Dust.”
The shenanigans on “Desperate Housewives” can’t hold a candle to this “Bleak” wonder.
Clear your calendars for the next six Sundays. “Bleak House” is that good.
Tonight’s highlights
Will Smith, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight star in the 1998 thriller “Enemy of the State” (8 p.m., ABC).
Sleepwalking on “Medium” (9 p.m., NBC).
A series of eruptions threaten to end life as we know it in the 2006 thriller “Magma: Volcanic Disaster” (9 p.m., Sci Fi).
Scheduled on “48 Hours Mystery” (10 p.m., CBS): how the disappearance of a coed took 10 years to solve.
A reluctant mother’s gruesome end on “Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit” (10 p.m., NBC).
Peter Sarsgaard hosts “Saturday Night Live” (11:30 p.m., NBC), featuring musical guests The Strokes.
Sunday’s highlights
Seattle hosts Carolina in the NFC Championship (3:30 p.m., Fox).
Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (7 p.m., CBS): Canada’s oil sands; a video game world champion; singer, author and gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman.
Scheduled on “Dateline” (7 p.m., NBC): supermarket hygiene; conflicting reports of a wife’s murder.
Fears of a meltdown on “The West Wing” (8 p.m., NBC).
“CNN Presents” (5 and 8 p.m., CNN) looks back at Christa McAuliffe, killed aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.
“Nick News with Linda Ellerbee: God, Science, Politics and Your School” (8:30 p.m., Nickelodeon) examines recent disputes over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design.
A nonhabit-forming feud on “Desperate Housewives” (9 p.m., ABC).
Love is blind on “Grey’s Anatomy” (10 p.m., ABC).
“Hollywood Celebrates Al Pacino: An American Cinematheque Tribute” (7:30 p.m., AMC) features appearances by Charlize Theron, Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep.