TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: Dec. 1
A select viewing guide for Thursday, Dec. 1
COMEDY Community NBC, CITY-TV, 8 p.m.ET/PT Community devotees are understandably dismayed by NBC's decision to pull the quirky comedy series off its schedule in early January (the timeslot will be filled by 30 Rock starting Jan.12). Although the network has promised fans the show will return – “at a later date” – it's common knowledge Community has pulled unimpressive ratings in its third season, which means cancellation is probably the next step. All of which makes the remaining episodes so precious. Tonight, Jeff (Joel McHale) and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) stand up to a group of students that have commandeered the college's foosball table. Catch it while you can.Mitchell Haaseth
REALITY D.U.I. TLC, 9 p.m.ET/PT Who says the reality genre is bereft of new ideas? Launching tonight, this new series takes viewers on a ride-along with police in Oklahoma as they patrol the highways in search of inebriated drivers. The format follows each offender from sobriety test through arrest, booking and eventual sentencing. And of course there's special attention paid to how the D.U.I. charge impacts each individual and his or her family. The concept begins with back-to-back episodes tonight and it's not just drunk drivers in the spotlight. In the first show, the cops collar a lady named Jessie for driving under the influence of marijuana. In the second show, they pull over a dude named Jimmy for driving erratically. Timely viewing for spot-check season.
DRAMA The Mentalist CBS, CTV, 10 p.m.ET/PT One of last season's standout stories, tonight's episode guest-stars the sumptuous Morena Baccarin, perhaps more familiar to viewers as the sexy alien leader Anna on ABC's recent remake of the sci-fi series V. In a change of pace role, Baccarin plays the professional matchmaker Erica Flynn, whose business receives some bad advertising when she's accused of murdering her own husband. For once, psychic-sleuth Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) appears to have met his match.
MOVIE The Ward The Movie Network, 9 p.m. Seen recently in the feature film The Rum Diary and in the short-lived series The Playboy Club, Amber Heard is the main attraction in this 2010 thriller directed by John Carpenter. Set in mid-sixties Oregon, the story casts Heard as a strange young woman named Kristen, who sets fire to a home and is promptly committed to a psychiatric hospital. Kristen begins to doubt her sanity when she begins seeing ghostly visages walking the hallways and her bunkmates start to disappear, one by one. British actor Jared Harris, who plays Lane on Mad Men, is particularly creepy as Kristen's shrink.