It's all about the ladies. As it often is on TV, on the weekend. Daffy ladies. Strange and wonderful ladies. Courageous ladies. Real housewives in some city. Desperate housewives in some fictional suburb. (By the way, ladies, Gale Harold, who played the charming Jackson, Susan's boyfriend on the Wives, is back at work after his accident. He returns May 3. And he's going to propose! OMG.) There is also a hot new animated sitcom on Fox, described by its creator as "the classic adults-are-idiots/kids-are-smart comedy." That includes ladies and not-so-gentle men.
GREY GARDENS
Saturday, HBO Canada, 8 p.m.
One day in the early 1970s, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles arrived at the shambolic home of Big Edie and Little Edie Beale. They asked if they could make a documentary about the mother and daughter. They got a "yes" from the women, both relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The resulting film, Grey Gardens, became a classic. The pair, remote from reality, existed in splendid squalor, bickered about the past - mainly their heyday in the 1930s - and, apparently lacking any sense of irony, displayed their extraordinary, poignant isolation. This movie is a dramatization of the period of the documentary, interspersed with key scenes from the past. Drew Barrymore (also the producer) plays Little Edie and Jessica Lange plays her mother. Made mostly in and around Toronto (and co-written by Patricia Rozema), it's wonderful. Barrymore is especially compelling as a woman thwarted in love. Very fine work from everyone involved.
SIT DOWN, SHUT UP
Sunday, Fox, Global, 8:30
This new animated series gets the plum, post- Simpsons spot. From the evidence of the pilot, it's not certain if that prize is deserved. Essentially, it's about the lives of staff members at a Florida high school. They're all obnoxious, loud, and several are morons. The students are bit players in this satire of the teaching life. Coming from Mitch Hurwitz, one of the creators of Arrested Development, and featuring the voices of some of AD's actors, it is at times incredibly crude. Only on an animated show could women, gays, Muslims and male jocks be so mercilessly mocked. Hurwitz has said of the show, "We're kind of pushing the envelope into another envelope. We're finding different ways to bust it open. We are going as far as we can." True. By the way, on Desperate Housewives (ABC, CTV, 9 p.m.), Edie (Nicolette Sheridan) makes her exit tonight.
THE COURAGEOUS HEART
OF IRENA SENDLER
Sunday, CBS, 9 p.m.
Anna Paquin, like Drew Barrymore, was a child star. She won an Academy Award in 1994, at the age of 11, for The Piano. Here she gives a subdued but strong performance as Irena Sendler, a heroic Polish Catholic social worker who saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during the Second World War. (Sendler died last year at 98.) The movie, a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation, was made in Latvia. Apart from Paquin, another familiar face is Marcia Gay Harden - recently on Damages - as Irena's skeptical mother. For much of the movie, Sendler is doggedly smuggling children from the Warsaw Ghetto, even as many of the people there choose to believe Nazi propaganda about their future. Then the movie shifts gears into a thriller, after Sendler is betrayed and on the run. It's a serious movie, uneven but tough-minded.
Check local listings.