ECHO: AN ELEPHANT TO REMEMBER

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 @ 9:00PM

Echo, the remarkable matriarch of a family of elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, was most studied elephant in the world, the subject of several books and documentaries, including two NATURE films. For nearly four decades, elephant expert Cynthia Moss, and award-winning filmmaker Martyn Colbeck were on hand to record the trials and triumphs of Echo and her family, documenting the intense loyalties and deep caring that are so fundamental to all elephants, creating a moving record of a life we all can share.

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DICK CAVETT’S WATERGATE

TUESDAY, AUGUST 16 @ 9:00PM

An intensely personal, intimate and entertaining look back at Watergate on the 40th anniversary of the historic resignation of President Richard Milhous Nixon, the only president to resign the office.

The documentary, featuring interviews from “The Dick Cavett Show” library — many not seen since the 70s — and new interviews with Carl Bernstein, John Dean , Timothy Naftali and Bob Woodward, premieres Friday, August 8, 2014, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS — exactly 40 years to the hour since President Nixon appeared on television to announce his resignation, which would officially take effect the next day, August 9, 1974.

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AUSTRALIA’S FIRST 4 BILLION YEARS

STRANGE CREATURES

SUNDAY, JULY 12 @ 6:00PM

In the wake of the catastrophic asteroid impact believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, Australia was set adrift on a lonely voyage across southern seas. With host Richard Smith, NOVA travels the walkabout continent to uncover how it became the strange land it is today. In this final episode, “Strange Creatures,” NOVA traces the last 65 million years, revealing the events that shaped the Australia we know today. Prehistoric jungles retreated, replaced by eucalypt forests, grasslands, and deserts. When humans first arrived, giant marsupials dominated the land and the Great Barrier Reef was yet to form. This is a tale of calamity and conquest; how a conspiracy of climate, biology, and geology shaped the Earth we now call home.

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THE SEAL WHO CAME HOME

SUNDAY, JULY 31 @ 10:00PM

The true story of Andre, a two-day-old wild harbor seal who, in 1961, was rescued from certain death by Harry Goodridge, an arborist from Rockport, Maine. Over the next 25 years, Andre and Harry established a friendship that brought Andre into the world of humans without Andre’s ever having to sacrifice his wildness. The human world gave Andre shelter during the harsh New England winter, but staying wild at heart meant Andre had the know-how to make the 200-mile swim home to Rockport. This interspecies friendship weathered every kind of challenge, including, at the end, Andre’s blindness.

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15 TO LIFE: KENNETH’S STORY

SATURDAY, MARCH 13 @ 10:00PM

Does sentencing a teenager to life without parole serve our society well? The United States is the only country in the world that routinely condemns children to die in prison. This is the story of one of those children, now a young man, seeking a second chance in Florida. At age 15, Kenneth Young received four consecutive life sentences for a series of armed robberies. Imprisoned for more than a decade, he believed he would die behind bars. Now a U.S. Supreme Court decision could set him free. 15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story follows Young’s struggle for redemption, revealing a justice system with thousands of young people serving sentences intended for society’s most dangerous criminals.

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POIROT SEASON 12

DEAD MAN’S FOLLY

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

David Suchet returns in his signature role as suave Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot to tantalize fans with two new cases, The Big Four (July 27) and Dead Man’s Folly (August 3), based on the novels by Agatha Christie. As the world stands on the brink of World War II in The Big Four, a grisly, ingeniously devised murder at an international peace reception reunites Hercule Poirot with old friends. In Dead Man’s Folly, famous mystery writer Ariadne Oliver creates a fiendishly complicated murder mystery weekend but calls in Poirot when it takes a a tragic turn.

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DUDAMEL CONDUCTS THE VERDI REQUIEM

AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL

FRIDAY, MARCH 17 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

In commemoration of the 2013 Giuseppe Verdi bicentennial, Music Director Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform a stirring concert of Verdi’s towering Requiem Mass at the Hollywood Bowl in California. Before the performance, the maestro shares his enthusiasm for the iconic venue, the largest natural amphitheater in the country, and for Verdi’s passionate and highly theatrical work: a mass, yes, but “in an opera way,” as Dudamel explains.

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WITH GWEN IFILL

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 @ 9:00PM

Congress scrambled to try and address a number of critical issues from border security to funding for the Veterans Administration before leaving to start its summer recess, but once again politics stalled any legislative progress. Intra-party politics forced House GOP leaders to cancel a Thursday vote on their own border bill because of strong opposition by members of their own party. House Republicans then moved to delay their August recess. Earlier in the week partisan politics were the backdrop to a vote by House Republicans to sue President Obama over his alleged abuse of executive power in enforcing the Affordable Care Act.

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THE RHINO WHO JOINED THE FAMILY

SUNDAY, AUGUST 24 @ 5:00PM

Rescued from flooding caused by the damming of the Zambezi River, Rupert, an orphaned black rhinoceros, was brought up in the suburban family home of wildlife vet Dr. John Condy. Rupert captured the hearts of the vet’s four young children before his eventual release into the wild. Fifty years later, the children are searching for clues to their childhood friend’s fate.

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AUSTRALIA’S FIRST 4 BILLION YEARS

MONSTERS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

“Monsters” begins Down Under at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. Host Richard Smith comes face-to-face with the previously unknown reptilian rulers of prehistoric Australia. NOVA resurrects the giants that stalked the Great Southern Land and discovers that some of these animals were among the largest ever to have walked the Earth. Others were some of the most dangerous. In the dry desert heart, scientists unearth an ancient inland ocean full of sea monsters. Opal fossils of some of these beasts paint a colorful picture of the exotic seascape, where long-necked plesiosaurs snacked on shelled creatures that grew as large as truck tires. The most fearsome was Kronosaurus, with a skull twice as long as T. rex. But reptiles didn’t have the world all to themselves. Mammals like the enigmatic platypus lived alongside them, ready for their moment in the sun.

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