TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: Sept. 6
A select viewing guide for Tuesday, Sept. 6
HISTORY Prophets of Doom History, 6 p.m. The end is near, according to the experts interviewed in this special. The offbeat program brings together doomsday scenarists Michael Ruppert, Nathan Hagens, James Howard Kunstler, John Cronin and Robert Gleason to compare notes on how modern civilization will collapse – and when. The most likely scenarios: The world’s oil supply will dwindle and run out; the global markets will collapse; terrorists will devastate the U.S. with nuclear attacks; and the entire planet will eventually run out of food and fresh water. Hey, quit trying to cheer me up!Handout
DOCUMENTARY Frontline PBS, 9 p.m. Has America gone too far in the war against terror? This new report, co-helmed by Frontline correspondent Michael Kirk and Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, examines the massive buildup of secret government agencies created in the wake of 9/11 to prevent future terrorist attacks. The program reveals the CIA’s clandestine network of “black site” prisons and confirms the massive American work force toiling secretly to keep America safe. According to one analyst, there are nearly a million such people scattered in more than 10,000 locations around the world. Is it any wonder why the U.S. economy is failing?Handout
DRAMA Combat Hospital ABC, Global, 10 p.m. Bringing its first summer run to a close tonight, and unlikely to return for another season, this medical drama series is set in the killing fields of Kandahar, but was really filmed in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. The storyline follows the earnest doctors toiling at a military hospital, with film veteran Elias Koteas leading the cast as the no-nonsense Colonel Marks. In tonight’s closer, the hospital’s women’s clinic sustains a vicious attack by an unknown assailant, thereby creating an ethical conundrum for the medics: How do they take care of their own, while also fighting to save the life of their attacker?Handout
MOVIE Frequency Vision, midnight This worthy 2000 drama resurrects the age-old fantasy of talking to dead loved ones. The reliable James Caviezel plays the New York cop John Sullivan, who still mourns the death of his firefighter father Frank (Dennis Quaid) in the line of duty 30 years earlier. While playing with the old man's ham radio one night, John is somehow able to contact his father three decades in the past. Naturally he warns him about the accident that will take his life, but the resulting time shift brings about an even more unpleasant timeline.