The Sunset Limited Saturday, HBO Canada, 9 p.m.
Serious viewing here - this two-hander is a straightforward TV version of novelist Cormac McCarthy's stage play. There are only two characters, the setting is tightly limited and it's really one long, ambling, often charged conversation between a college professor with a bleak worldview and suicidal tendencies (Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed) and a gravely religious ex-con (Samuel L. Jackson). Although these are fully fleshed characters the production is really about two points of view in life. One is grim, a perspective that sees society as collapsing into itself through self-absorption and shallowness. The other is more hopeful, finding goodness all the more appealing in a horrible world. Anyone who has read McCarthy's novels will be familiar with the themes. Both actors go at it with gusto, often a tad too much gusto. This is one of those cases of serious theatrical material that would have benefited from being expanded for TV. Still, McCarthy devotees will adore it.
The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards Sunday, CBS, Global, 8 p.m.
Oh my. The buzz about the 2010 Grammy Awards is just mad. Mad, I tell you. The list of of performers includes Eminem, Cee Lo Green, Lady Gaga, Miranda Lambert, Katy Perry and Canadian band Arcade Fire. Also, a special duet - Canadian fella Drake and fellow but female sensation Rihanna. Can you beat that for excitement? Wait, there's more - Mick Jagger makes his very first live appearance at the Grammys, part of the show's "In Memoriam" tribute. No don't be confused, he's not dead but appearing live through the magic of TV technology. He pays homage to music icons who have died in the past year. Plus, there is "a valentine and get-well card" to Aretha Franklin, performed by Yolanda Adams, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, Martina McBride and Florence Welch. The Grammy announcement says Franklin underwent surgery for an undisclosed ailment. But "she has since said she is in excellent health." Possibly she said she's doing fine in order to stop this "valentine and get-well card." To no avail. Red-carpet coverage starts on Global at 7 p.m.
Love Letters Sunday, CBC, 11 p.m.
This ain't no Grammy-style shindig. This is for grown-ups - a terrific TV special derived from A.R. Gurney's famous play of the same title. Real acting couples perform excerpts from the play (which tracks a lifelong love from adolescence to old age) and also talk sweetly about their own relationships. Among the performing couples are Peter Keleghan and Leah Pinsent, Peter Donaldson and Sheila McCarthy and Carlo Rota and Nazneen Contractor. Gordon Pinsent (Leah's dad), who performed the work many times with his late wife Charmion King, introduces the program. It's a production that works well - the bittersweet heart of the play is honoured, while the acting couples get to unleash certain dynamics that are normally off-limits to them in their work. The whole thing is imbued with great charm. CBC is re-airing this in honour of Donaldson, who died last month at 57.
Guilty Pleasures Sunday, CBC NN, 10 p.m. on The Passionate Eye
This lovely, lighthearted doc is about the romance-novel industry. We're told at the start that a romance novel is sold every four seconds somewhere in the world. The first writer of the genre we meet is Roger, a senior living in England who turns out romance novels, aimed at women, under the name Gill Sanderson, and does very well at it. We also meet a Japanese housewife who is mad for dancing and has a serious thing for David Beckham. She consumes romance novels voraciously. We see Roger meet his fellow writers at a gathering in England (he's one of the few males) and meet a woman in India who sees her personal relationships through the prism of gushing novels abut true love. Obviously the contrast is between reality and the escapism offered in the books, but it is very nicely done.
Check local listings.