WITH GWEN IFILL

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8 @ 9:00PM

This Week: Drone Strikes, S&P Lawsuit and GOP Reinvention

A confidential Justice Department memo explaining the justification for targeting U.S. citizens involved with terrorist groups overseas with drone strikes became public this week.  After a number of legal experts and lawmakers raised concerns about the legality ofthe operation, the White House agreed to release classified documents to Congress explaining the administration’s rationale.  Carrie Johnson of NPR will report on the targeted-killing policy and how decisions about these types of attacks are made by the CIA and Defense Department.

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HAMLET WITH DAVID TENNANT

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

To be, or not to be: that is the question. David Tennant meets fellow actors who’ve taken on Hamlet and compares notes on how to play a character that’s been played, probably, a million different ways.

An acclaimed Hamlet in a recent Royal Shakespeare Company production, Tennant looks into the text about the doomed Danish Prince alongside the actors Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw.

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Alby Hurwit is a doctor whose lifelong passion for music led him to compose one symphony, with the clock ticking on his ability to complete another.

Lifecasters explores the dramatic stories of Americans living beyond the spotlight, outside of the mainstream. Compelling people whose lives defy categorization, who contribute rarely heard, unique voices to our culture.

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BUILDING PHARAOH’S CHARIOT

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28 @ 10:00PM

Around 3,600 years ago, reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategic revolution, and was the secret weapon behind Egypt’s greatest era of conquest known as the New Kingdom. But was the Egyptian chariot really a revolutionary design?

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THE MYSTERIOUS LOST STATE OF FRANKLIN

MONDAY, AUGUST 26 @ 12:30AM

The Mysterious Lost State of Franklin, a half-hour documentary, chronicles the creation and demise of the State of Franklin, a pivotal yet oft forgotten post-Revolutionary War rebellion and attempted secession. Due to tax burdens, the state of North Carolina ceded its western land to the U.S. Government. Feeling abandoned, some of the citizens of the ceded territory — the counties of Washington, Sullivan and Greene — began their own government and called themselves the State of Franklin, named after the esteemed statesman Benjamin Franklin.

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SILICON VALLEY

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.

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DOWNTON ABBEY SEASON 3

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17 @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

EPISODE 7

The Crawleys head to a Scottish hunting lodge, while the downstairs staff stays behind at Downton Abbey. New romances flare up, and a fresh crisis unfolds.

The much-loved cast of Downton Abbey Season 3 includes Maggie Smith, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Dan Stevens, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter, Penelope Wilton, and a host of others. Written and created by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey, Season 3 marks the return of one of television’s most beloved and anticipated drama series to MASTERPIECE on MCPTV 26.1 tonight!

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THE SKILLS GAP

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1 @ 9:30PM

The nation’s unemployment rate has been hovering just below eight percent for months — that means about twelve million Americans are jobless and looking for work. Yet at the same time, firms nationwide say they’re having a hard time filling nearly four million job openings.

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HENRY IV & HENRY V WITH JEREMY IRONS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1 @ 8:00PM

He will give the devil his due. Jeremy Irons researches Shakespeare’s history plays as well as the differences between the real history and the father-son drama that Shakespeare creates.

Six episodes combine history, biography, iconic performances, new analysis and the personal passion of its celebrated hosts — Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Trevor Nunn, Joely Richardson and David Tennant — to tell the story behind the stories of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

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SPACE SHUTTLE DISASTER

THURSDAY, JANUARY 31 @ 11:00PM

At the end of a nearly flawless 15-day mission in early 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, killing the crew of seven men and women. In this documentary, NOVA probes the accident and the decisions stretching back four decades that made the tragedy almost inevitable. It offers a penetrating look at the history of the shuttle program and the political pressures that made the shuttle a highly complex engineering compromise, which fell short of its ambitious goal to make space travel routine, cheap, and safe.

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