SATURDAY
Our Game to Give
TSN, 7 p.m.
A Saturday night tradition returns. Well, sort of. It's hockey night in Canada, at least for tonight, as Gordie Howe drops the puck at the opening face-off of this outdoor charity game. Some of the National Hockey League's best known players including Gilmour, Sundin, Brodeur, Nieuwendyk and Cujo will be lacing up at Hamilton's Ivor Wynne Stadium, which is hosting its very first hockey game. Dave Randorf and Glenn Healy will be on hand to call the action. Barring April showers, making nice on the ice could be just the slapshot needed to drive some enthusiasm for next season into disillusioned NHL fans.
SUNDAY
Mystery!:
Malice Aforethought
PBS, 9 p.m.
Soon enough, you'll know whodunit. The puzzler here is, will the killer get away with it? And the real pleasure is in the black humour that ripples through the respectable veneer of the terribly proper 1920s English village of Wyvern's Cross. When local doctor Edmund Bickleigh, disdained as an interloper who married up, tires of the torments of his formidable, well-to-do wife Julia and the increasingly indiscrete affections of his lovesick young mistress Ivy, he begins to eye the medicines on the shelves in his surgery in a less restorative light. One undetected murder soon begets schemes for the demise of several other bothersome villagers. Ben Miller (Johnny English) and Barbara Flynn (He Knew He Was Right) as the philandering physician and his vicious missus head up an ensemble cast that breathes life into stock characters, making for a delightfully arch mystery. Malice Aforethought concludes next Sunday.
TUESDAY
The Block
HGTV, 7 p.m.
Talk about renovation hell. Four oh-so-cute couples pack their suitcases and move into a seriously grungy fourplex fixer upper and are given just 11 weeks and $40,000 each to get their identical two-bedroom units refurbished, furnished, decorated and ready for sale -- all while working their regular day jobs. Each couple gets to keep the difference between the pre-reno value and the buyer's bid, and the pair netting the highest price for their spruced-up property takes home an additional hundred grand. With the eight hopefuls variously plagued by termites, rotting floor boards, disgusting toilets, gaping holes, water leaks and less than neighbourly competitors -- and that's just the first episode -- this Aussie import promises to deliver more than a little schadenfreude.
Call It Karma
Vision, 10 p.m.
This visually stunning documentary about a Buddhist monk's incredible pilgrimage is only slightly marred by filmmaker Geoff Browne's occasional intrusions with his own story of making the film. Young spiritualist Gyalten Rinpoche, instructed by his master to undertake the journey, walked from his remote Tibetan monastery through the Himilayas to Nepal and then on to India, a trek of 1,000 miles. Browne recreates Rinpoche's treacherous trek, a tremendous leap of faith enhanced by the film's vaste vistas of sky, mountain and snow. Even as pure adventure, Call It Karma is an arresting story.
Also:
Though the civil portion of Charles and Camilla's nuptials is a private affair, The Royal Wedding (Friday, 9 a.m., Newsworld) provides two hours of live coverage of the religious service following that ceremony. This is the event at Windsor Castle, which the Queen will attend, with the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding over prayers and a dedication.
On Tuesday, Comedy launches Popcultured with Elvira Kurt (10 p.m.) with the female comic taking satirical jabs at our celebrity-obsessed culture four nights a week. Now, if she'd only pop the bubbles of eTalk Daily's annoyingly inane Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim.
And if you're wondering what TVOntario is sinking its annual $50-million from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities into, now that the educational broadcaster has dropped Imprint, here's part of the answer. Two new series premiere on Saturday: Get Outta Town! (12:30 p.m.) is a charming if slight kids travel series exploring a day in the life of teens around the world; and Distinguished Artists (4 p.m.) is a low-rent Inside the Actors Studio produced by Humber College students, with Joan Rivers as its first guest.