KING LEAR WITH CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 @ 10:00PM

King Lear is universally acknowledged as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic roles. Plummer has played the role under the direction of Sir Jonathan Miller (who, we discover, has directed it six times).

Lear was, in fact, a real English king, who lived 800 years before Christ. Shakespeare’s premise of Lear dividing his kingdom among his daughters and, in the process, disinheriting his favorite is, for the most part, supposedly true. It is included in the Chronicles of English History, which Shakespeare often used as source material. The historic story has a happy ending, but Shakespeare gave his theatrical interpretation a dreadful dénouement that has been shocking audiences for 400 years.

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

WITH HUGH BONNEVILLE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 @ 8:00PM

Hugh Bonneville started his career at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, understudying Ralph Fiennes as Lysander, one of the four lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He and Fiennes meet up again to try to untangle the extraordinary plot of one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular plays, a great comedy of love and enchantment.

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BEN FRANKLIN’S BONES

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26 @ 10:00PM

In December 1997, 36 Craven Street was undergoing extensive renovation to transform it into the Benjamin Franklin Museum. While digging in the basement, a builder turned up a grisly discovery – a pit filled with human bones, including those of several infants – which prompted a call to the police.

“I would say in my 30 years in the police service, this is the first private address I have been to where there have been bones found actually concealed in the property,” says retired Detective Inspector Jim O’Connell, Metropolitan Police Service New Scotland Yard. “I thought, ‘I need to get some expert advice here…’ We called on a local coroner to come and give us some assistance.”

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PENGUIN POST OFFICE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 @ 6:00PM & 10:00PM

Antarctica’s most popular tourist destination is a unique British post office located in the heart of the Antarctic Peninsula at Port Lockroy, about 700 miles south of Argentina and Chile. Enthusiastic cruise ship passengers from around the world come ashore throughout the Antarctic summer to see the colony of 3,000 gentoo penguins that takes up residence each year alongside Port Lockroy’s other summer inhabitants – the post office staff.

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PHILADELPHIA – FRANKLIN INSTITUTE

TUESDAY, JANUARY 27 @ 9:00PM

At Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, a team of genealogists uncovers fascinating family histories. A man learns that the event that drove his family to the City of Brotherly Love changed the course of history; a man may be a Viking descendant; another’s family could have part of one of history’s biggest scams; a young man hopes to confirm his relation to a signer of the Declaration of Independence; and two sisters learn their ancestors were part of the great Irish migration.

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AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

TUESDAY, JANUARY 27 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had amassed a fortune and achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light.

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A PATH APPEARS

MONDAY, JANUARY 26 @ 8:00PM

A Path Appears, from the creative team behind the series Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, follows Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and a group of dedicated actor/advocates to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States. They uncover the harshest forms of gender inequality, the devastating impact of poverty and the ripple effects that follow: including sex trafficking, teen-pregnancy, gender-based violence, child slavery and the effective solutions being forged to combat them.

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DOWNTON ABBEY SEASON 5

SUNDAY, JANUARY 25 @ 10:00PM

EPISODE 4: As Edith’s access to Marigold slips away, news about Gregson arrives. An unwell Thomas returns, Mary meets her match, and police suspicions narrow.

Downton Abbey returns for an epic fifth season of intimately interlaced stories centered on an English country estate—a deliciously entertaining formula that has made it the highest-rated drama in PBS history.

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MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!

GRANTCHESTER

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

EPISODE 2: Sidney’s former flame throws an engagement party that leads to murder. To crack the case, Sidney and Geordie must break a code of silence.

Handsome, young vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton) shares his spiritual duties with a love of jazz, complicated relationships with women, and an enthusiasm for amateur sleuthing. When the concern of a parishioner compels him to dig deeper into a grisly suicide, he gets on the nerve of a tired, local law enforcement officer—Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green). Fortunately, the cleric and the cop bond over their war service, their love of a good pub, and their competitive instincts—in this case, for backgammon.

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RICHARD TUCKER OPERA GALA

A NEW CENTURY

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23 @ 11:00PM

The superb American tenor, Richard Tucker, died in Kalamazoo, Michigan in January, 1975 while on a concert tour with his great friend, the baritone Robert Merrill.

Within the year his widow and sons created the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, a “non-profit cultural organization dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of the great American tenor through the support and advancement of the careers of talented American opera singers.”  Hundreds of young American singers have benefitted from this support, and each year the Foundation singles out an extraordinary young singer for The Richard Tucker Award in recognition of having “reached a high level of artistic accomplishment and who, in the opinion of a conferral panel, is on the threshold of a major international career.” (2 Hours)

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