Seven Days of Television: May 12 to May 18
A select viewing guide to the next seven days of television
MONDAY MAY 12 Antiques Roadshow (PBS, 8 p.m.) What’s in your attic? Still chugging along in its 18th season, PBS’s scavenger-hunt series hasn’t changed one iota since its first show. In each outing, the Roadshow team rolls into some city where hundreds of people have showed up for a free assessment of their curios and objets d’art. Tonight, Mark L. Walberg and the pros roll into Richmond, Virginia, where the items include a stunning water-color painting by Albert Neuhuys and a 1982 University of North Carolina basketball signed by Michael Jordan.
TUESDAY MAY 13 Riot (Fox, 9 p.m.) Get ready to dive into the heady comedy-subculture of improvisational comedy. Executive-produced by Steve Carell, this new series provides summer employment to impro-comedy veterans. How it works: Seven improv pros are put through unique comedy challenges, each with a little twist – like having to wear an aerial harness or performing on a sloping floor angled at 22 degrees. The best part: Carell himself shows up in tonight’s opener and the man still possesses formidable improv-comedy chops.
WEDNESDAY MAY 14 Law & Order: SVU (NBC, 9 p.m.) Recently renewed for a 16th season, the last show standing in the L&O franchise just keeps rolling along with nasty new crime stories. In tonight’s season ender, Sgt. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) investigates claims that a high-profile photographer (Joshua Malina) may be taking things too far with younger clients. Canada’s Nia Vardalos returns to her guest role of lawyer Minonna Efron.
THURSDAY MAY 15 The Big Bang Theory (CBS, CTV, 8 p.m.) Network television’s most-watched comedy winds down its seventh season tonight – and could look a little different when it returns next September. Spinning off last week’s episode in which Leonard (Johnny Galecki) became engaged to Penny (Kaley Cuoco Sweeting), the season finale finds Leonard’s roomie Sheldon (Jim Parsons) pondering his own sweeping life change. Elsewhere, Raj (Kunal Nayyar) decides to take it to the next level with his new girlfriend, while Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) are working around the clock to take care of the wretched Mrs. Wolowitz).
FRIDAY MAY 16 Barbara Walters: Her Story (ABC, 9 p.m.) The time has come to heap praise onto Barbara Walters. This new retro-special pays glowing tribute to the veteran TV personality, who retires today at age 84. Expect clips of Walters breaking the glass ceiling on TV news on NBC’s Today in the early sixties and then making history all over again as network television’s first female nightly news co-anchor in the seventies. Perhaps most impressive is the fact Babs still plans on doing interviews for ABC News; just two weeks ago, she was the only journalist to nab an interview with V. Stiviano, the woman at the center of the Donald Sterling racism scandal. You go, girl.
SATURDAY MAY 17 Kevin Nealon: Whelmed…But Not Overly (Comedy Network, 10 p.m.) Best known for his former stint on Saturday Night Live and fleeting appearances in feature films, Kevin Nealon acquits himself nicely in this standup special taped last year. In his trademark laidback style, Nealon puts his spin on the foibles of the human condition and life’s various inconveniences. He also has a pretty good story about the time he crop-dusted Jack Nicholson.
SUNDAY MAY 18 The Amazing Race (CTV, 7 p.m.; CBS, 8 p.m.) Network television’s most engaging reality series winds down in tonight’s 24 th season finale. After countless layovers in foreign locales, the global scavenger hunt has finally come down to the last three teams standing: Father-and-son duo Dave and Connor, country singers Caroline and Jennifer and newlywed couple Brendon and Rachel. In tonight’s closer, the three teams are dropped in Las Vegas for one last challenge – which happens to have been designed specially for the occasion by master magician David Copperfield.