October 26, 2007

What to Watch: Coming Up on Cable

It's crying time again on Animal Planet, as Meerkat Manor turns Mostly Mozart, warns Seth Arenstein — who also advises catching Dr. Jane Goodall in her latest special for the channel.

Tube Stake: Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

GOING COMMANDO: Mozart in love on Meerkat Manor.

• Friday, October 26

Meerkat Manor, 8:30pm, Animal Planet.

It’s been a tough season 3 for devotees of this charming series. Alas, tonight’s episode will require a full box of tissues.  

Like the composer whose name she shares, Mozart the Meerkat female is a loner and bound to live a tragic life (heck, she’s been suffering for 3 seasons). Recently she has wandered the Kalahari after separating from her cadre and enduring the loss of Flower, her mother, and her sisters.

Yet Mozart has hope, and it’s rewarded. After weeks of her solo journey, she’s found a fellow traveler named Wilson, and fallen in love with the Commando male who, in turn, had a short, problematic relationship with Rocket Dog. The lovers copulate (pastorally, thank goodness) and then spend a cozy night together in Mozart’s burrow. Things are looking up, right?

But, as our narrator tells us, “Life in the Kalahari always has a dark side.”  A brush fire engulfs the area around Mozart’s flat and the Meerkat duo must flee.

Fortunately they survive the night’s terrifying ordeal, but the area is unfit for foraging. Wilson heads back to his group in Commando territory; Mozart follows. Although she’s a rival, Mozart may smell enough like Wilson to be accepted into the Commandos.

Yet the Commandos are about to do battle with another group; Wilson joins, fighting against Rocket Dog. Mozart, without an ally, must flee, and spend the night on her own.

The next morning Wilson sets off to find his lady friend as a magnificent Kalahari Sun blazes. But, we are told, behind this great beauty is indifference for life.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.  

HEADLESS: SCI FI gets its spook on.

• Saturday, October 27

Headless Horseman, 9pm, SCI FI.

Forget about Washington Irving. Here we have 7 teens in a van, headed to a party, up to no good, and they get lost on a country road. They make it into a town called Wormwood, but unfortunately it’s filled with creepy folk, including Night Court’s Richard Moll, his sexy teen daughter and a headless guy out for revenge. You know this isn’t going to work out well for some of the young people, right? If you like your pre-Halloween movies bloody and headless, this film’s for you.

THE GOOD DOCTOR: Jane Goodall in her element.

• Sunday, October 28

Almost Human with Jane Goodall, 8pm, Animal Planet.

Dr Jane Goodall is like Sara Lee—nobody doesn’t like her.

And while Animal Planet plays off her famous name with this special—part of a trio of don't-miss ape programs including Saving a Species: Gorillas on the Brink, a special that takes Natalie Portman in search of Rwanda's rare mountain gorillas (Friday Oct. 26, 9pm) and new series Orangutan Island (Nov. 2, 9pm)—the good Doctor lets her chimp friends star in this useful hour.

The “plot” here is that Gaia, one of Goodall’s chimp buddies from Gombe National Forest in Tanzania, has fled the nest after losing her second baby. Interspersed between her searches for Gaia is precious footage by her regular cameraman Bill Wallauer, proving Goodall’s oft-made point that chimps are an awful lot like you and me.

We see Gaia and her mates, in earlier times, laughing, using tools to gather food, and seeking attention from their mother. And why has Gaia left? Like a human who’d lost two children during childbirth, the chimp is likely depressed by her situation, Goodall surmises. 

In the midst of Goodall’s discussions about chimps and their personalities, backed up by great footage, larger issues are covered, too. When Goodall began watching chimps in 1960, there were 1 million of them. There are about 150,000 at most today.

The biggest culprit has been Africa's bush meat trade, or commercial hunting for food, Goodall argues, as the narrator recites her efforts building refuges for the animals; she’s had four built already, we’re told.

And then there is her push to educate youngsters about conservation. “If we don’t teach our children to be better stewards than we’ve been,” than there’s no point in pushing for conservation, she argues.

PETTY AMBITIONS: Tom Petty in new Sundance doc.

• Monday, October 29

Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, 7pm, Sundance Channel.

I’m blissfully unaware of much about pop culture, so I presented a tabula rasa for Peter Bogdanovich’s new, 4-hour documentary about Tom Petty.

While I can imagine the piece offers a tasty meal for fans of Petty, it’s interesting even for a neophyte. Petty, who commissioned the piece and provides many of the interviews shown, has his story told in comprehensive fashion. But what a story it is.

The boy Petty was obsessed with 1950s rock, particularly Elvis, whom he met at age 10 when the King was in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida, to film Follow That Dream. That meeting hooked Petty on Elvis’ music. The kid listened to records so much that his family and friends were concerned.

After Petty saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show as a 13-year-old, “everything changed.” He started a band, The Epics, and recalls, with great gusto, the first time he experienced playing music with others. Their first gig was a hit. “We played three songs and they loved us. They asked for more. We played our three songs again.”

The doc recalls chance encounters that led to Petty’s meeting guitarist Mike Campbell and later keyboard player Benmont Tench, two phenomenal musicians. It also chronicles, in great detail, the Epics becoming Mudcrutch, and a few years later moving to California to cut records.

Once the band, plus and minus some personnel, became The Heartbreakers, things began to become more complicated. Tours were set up (the band initially found acceptance in the U.K.), more records were cut, money rolled in and quite a bit of recreational drug use followed.

While much of this is interesting in the hands of master storyteller Bogdanovich, and there’s a lot of excellent footage and, of course, music, we have to wait until the 2-hour mark to really get inside Petty. Why did he have to become a rocker and leave Gainesville? What motivated him to sing and write edgy songs?

Like Lennon and McCartney, Madonna, Hendrix, Sinead O’Connor and Bono, the answer can be found in Petty’s childhood. While all the above lost their mothers as kids, Petty’s mom was spared, although she and her children suffered much at the hands of her abusive husband.

MUNSTER MASH: WGN plots Halloween marathon.

• Wednesday, October 31

The Munsters Halloween Marathon, 2pm-8pm ET, WGN.

It’s time to give The Munsters the recognition the series deserves. This week, appropriately on Halloween day, Superstation WGN will hale the strange crew who resided at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a marathon of 12 classic eps from the series, which ran from 1964-66.

Below are 10 reasons, some substantive, why you should watch at least some of the marathon. 

1. The show’s makeup, costumes and attention to detail were magnificent. Instead of black hair, Lily (Yvonne DeCarlo) had a white streak meant to remind viewers of The Bride of Frankenstein. And Lily, Grandpa (Al Lewis) and especially Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) took hours to apply makeup and climb into their costumes. Gwynne’s accoutrements included a flat head, platform shoes and shoulder pads; he sweated so profusely in the gear that he was perpetually fighting weight loss. Sad thing is that after removing the costume and makeup, Gwynne, a fine actor and children's book author, still looked a bit like Frankenstein. On the other hand, his portrayal holds up well even after more than 30 years, as does the series.

2. Lily clutched a lily to her breast each night when she went to bed.

3. Grandpa, aka Count Dracula, started a sitcom tradition, followed by such stalwarts as The Golden Girls, that awards the actor playing the eldest member of the ensemble the best comedic lines.

Grandpa’s also the only known sitcom character whose favorite place to sit was in what appears to be the type of electric chair used to kill criminals.

Lewis, who died last year at 95 or 83 (there’s controversy about his birth date), was quite a character. A political activist, he ran for governor of NY in 1998 under the Green Party banner against incumbent George Pataki and collected 52,000 votes. He also ran a restaurant in NY’s Greenwich Village called Grandpa’s and was much in demand by college coaches for his ability to scout high school basketball talent.

4. Herman’s lunchbox for his job at “the parlor” was the size of most people’s attaché case. This culinary note leads us to reason #5.  

5. With The Munsters we once again see families on television sitting down for meals. And what meals—“More fillet of dragon, Grandpa?” Lily asks her father, The Count, in one episode. In another she serves shish kabob on long daggers—of course Grandpa ignores the meat and eats the metal. “That’s the way to cook a knife,” he tells Lily approvingly. And every drink The Munsters imbibed or offered to terrified guests always had tufts of smoke wafting from it.

6. The Munsters series must have kept theatrical dust companies in business. Supplies were needed every time Lilly vacuumed in her special way (her machine spewed dust and dirt out of its hose, making the Munster home even more dusty—couches and chairs spewed out dust any time someone sat on them) or Herman hit the deck from fainting or jumped up and down during one of his recurring temper tantrums, which also resulted in plaster and wood falling to the ground. And how many people did it take to put in all those cobwebs at The Munsters’ manse? And who decorated the 9-room and a dungeon house? And who was responsible for the haphazard landscaping? And who had the idea for the Munsters to make phone calls in a satin-lined coffin?

7. This marathon allows you to expose your kids to young versions of Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, Louis Nye, Charlie Callas and baseball’s Leo Durocher. Or you could savor them all by yourself.

8. The Munsters’ perversity could be a diversity lesson for your kids. Where The Munsters came from, everyone was hundreds of years old, had green skin, lived in dark, dirty homes, believed cold, rainy and dark constituted a beautiful day. In turn, The Munsters considered the norms in our culture unusual.  

9. If your kids haven’t seen this classic 1964 send-up of famous monster characters, wouldn’t it be a great way to get them warmed up for Halloween?

10. Marilyn.