A SALUTE TO DOWNTON ABBEY

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 @ 11:30PM

As the top-rated PBS drama of all time approaches its sixth and final season in January 2016, join host Hugh Bonneville, who portrays Robert, Earl of Grantham, to look back on this remarkable series and its beloved characters.

A Salute to Downton Abbey gives a tantalizing glimpse of what the climactic nine episodes in Season 6 will bring. Where will fate, passion, ambition and duty lead television’s cherished characters?

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ANDREA BOCELLI: CINEMA

FRIDAY, JUNE 30 @ 11:00PM

The international superstar tenor lends his unique voice to a lush symphonic salute to the movies, Andrea Bocelli: Cinema, celebrating some of the greatest celluloid songs and scores of all time written by a varied range of Italian and Hollywood composers. The concert special also reunites Andrea Bocelli with legendary music producer David Foster, whose first collaboration with the tenor was Foster’s own Academy Award-nominated song “The Prayer,” a duet with Celine Dion in 1999.

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WITH GWEN IFILL

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 @ 9:00PM

This Week on Washington Week | Measuring the Mood of America: Concerns About Terror Attacks, Distrust of Elected Leaders

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, President Obama tried to reassure nervous Americans this week that there is no credible intelligence about a terrorist plot against the U.S. New polls show a majority of Americans are fearful that a Paris-style attack could happen near them and there is now growing support for the U.S. to intensify its assault on the Islamic State.

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50TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26 @ 6:00PM

For decades, folk music fans have tuned in to their radios for an annual Thanksgiving ritual: listening to Arlo Guthrie‘s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” The 18-minute song is an epic piece of storytelling and now, 50 years on, it’s being commemorated in a nationwide concert tour and Thanksgiving PBS television special.

Arlo Guthrie joins Here & Now‘s Meghna Chakrabarti to explain why “Alice’s Restaurant” remains so popular among its fans, and why so many people regard it as an anti-Vietnam War song when he sees it primarily as a song against stupidity.

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EINSTEIN’S BIG IDEA

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 @ 11:00PM

Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In “Einstein’s Big Idea,” NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof that atoms exist, and his explanation of the nature of light, which would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among Einstein’s ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous.

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INSIDE EINSTEIN’S MIND

SATURDAY, JUNE 1 @ 11:00PM

On November 25th, 1915, Einstein published his greatest work: general relativity. The theory transformed our understanding of nature’s laws and the entire history of the cosmos, reaching back to the origin of time itself. Now, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s achievement, NOVA tells the inside story of Einstein’s masterpiece. The story begins with the intuitive thought experiments that set Einstein off on his quest and traces the revolution in cosmology that is still playing out in today’s labs and observatories. Discover the simple but powerful ideas at the heart of relativity, illuminating the theory—and Einstein’s brilliance—as never before. From the first spark of an idea to the discovery of the expanding universe, the Big Bang, black holes, and dark energy, NOVA uncovers the inspired insights and brilliant breakthroughs of “the perfect theory.”

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JAMESTOWN’S DARK WINTER

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27 @ 11:00PM

Jamestown, Virginia. The site of the first permanent English colony the Americas settled in 1607 and the home of the archaeological site “Historic Jamestowne” today. It has long been speculated that the harsh conditions faced by the colonists during the winter of 1609, often referred to as the “starving time,” might have made them desperate enough to participate in the unthinkable, and perhaps even commit murder to do so.

Secrets of the Dead: Jamestown’s Dark Winter follows archaeologists and forensic anthropologists as they excavate the early American colony to uncover a dark secret hidden for more than 400 years.

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

In the early 17th century, a small group of religious radicals embarked from England to establish a separatist religious community across the Atlantic Ocean in the New World. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Plantation for more than 30 years, wrote the definitive history of the early colony, from the early formation of a separatist Protestant sect in England to a colony in the New World whose hard-fought success after a decade would trigger a massive influx of colonists throughout New England.

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