TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: June 29
Your select viewing guide for Friday, June 29
HISTORY: Treasure Trader (History, 7 p.m.) Alas, Billy, we hardly knew ye. This new series chronicles the globetrotting adventures of treasure hunter Billy Jamieson, who passed away suddenly last summer. The reason to watch stems entirely from Jamieson’s genuine passion for his profession and his enthusiasm for the next great artifact just waiting to be discovered. In tonight’s series opener, Billy and fiancé Jessica travel to Paris to negotiate a deal to purchase a rare Egyptian mummy. While in the City of Light, he wanders into a bizarre antiquities market where he stumbles upon an authentic shrunken human head.
REALITY: Undercover Boss (CBS, 8 p.m.) Good reality TV or underhanded corporate manipulation? Since launching in 2010, this U.S. version of a popular British TV series has come under fire for being formulaic and faking situations in order to depict corporate America in a favourable light. For the uninitiated, the format features CEOs going undercover among the rank of file of the companies they run, while hidden cameras film the results. In tonight’s second-season episode, Steve Joyce, CEO of the hotel chain Choice Hotels International, dons a uniform to work as a maintenance man at a Comfort Inn in Orlando, Florida. Sure, it’s contrived, but there’s still something intensely satisfying about watching a senior executive sweeping up and unclogging toilets.
DRAMA: CSI: NY (CBS, CTV, 9 p.m.) Welcome to the violent world of mixed martial arts and cage-fighting, where men are men and sometimes turn up dead outside of the ring. In tonight’s episode of this sturdy crime drama, CSI honcho Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) brings in his team when the body of a popular cage fighter is found charred almost beyond recognition. All signs point to a fan/stalker, but is it possible that a fellow fighter had a personal grudge against the victim? Real-life mixed martial arts champion Tito Ortiz guests as one of brawlers.
DOCUMENTARY: Who’s Sorry Now? (CBC News Network, 10 p.m.) In the TMZ era, the public apology has become a fine art by necessity. This sharp documentary by Marc de Guerre takes aim at the spin-control business in a world where many people spend their days glued to gossip websites and everybody has a cellphone camera in their pocket. The film rehashes the very public mea culpas offered up in recent memory by the likes of Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson and former BP CEO Tony Hayward. There’s also revealing interviews with several notable spin doctors, including Harlan Loeb, who advises corporations on how to maximize damage control, and Barry Levine, editor of the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer, which was the first media outlet to break the story of former presidential candidate John Edwards’ infidelity.The Associated Press
MOVIE: The Two Mrs. Carrolls (TCM, midnight ET; 9 p.m. PT) Even in the wrong film, Humphrey Bogart proves his mettle as one of the best actors in cinema history. In this 1947 film noir, Bogie is wildly miscast but still believable as the effete artist Geoffrey Carroll, who, while on vacation in Scotland, falls in love with the winsome Sally (Barbara Stanwyck). Sally pulls the plug on the affair once she discovers he has an invalid wife and daughter, but Geoffrey has other ideas. Once back in America, he ships his daughter off to boarding school and begins to poison his wife by lacing her nightly glass of warm milk with toxic chemicals. The wife expires and Geoffrey and Sally settle into their marital bliss – until she realizes he’s already planning for a third Mrs. Carroll.