Featured Programs - 2007
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Great Performances
“Paul McCartney: Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road”
Monday, Dec. 31 at 10 p.m.
Sir Paul McCartney returns to the London studio where most of the Beatles's recordings were made for an intimate journey from his very first Beatles song to his album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
Read the review by Bill Gardner, Morning Radio Personality, KOOL 94.5
Great Performances
“John Lennon’s Jukebox”
Monday, Dec. 31 at 11 p.m.
Lennon's personal track list cataloged 41 records of American soul, R&B and rock 'n' roll. In this performance documentary, viewers meet some of the artists Lennon strove to emulate as a young rocker.
Read the review by Bill Gardner, Morning Radio Personality, KOOL 94.5
July 2007
Great Performances
“Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story”
Wednesday, August 1 at 9 p.m.
Between 1959 and 1975, Stax Records in Memphis, Tenn., released international chart-topping hits such as "Soul Man," "Dock of the Bay," "Green Onions," "Midnight Hour," "Respect Yourself" and the theme from Shaft . The label's artists included Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MGs, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes — even Richard Pryor and Jesse Jackson. Founded by a conservative white bank teller who played country fiddle music, Stax became the pre-eminent soul music label in America . Its story is entwined with the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the rise of black nationalism in the 1970s. Respect Yourself documents the Stax label, its visionaries and most of all, its music.
Read the review by Bill Gardner, Morning Radio Personality, KOOL 94.5
May 2007
American Masters
“Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built”
Wednesday, May 2 at 9 p.m.
Ahmet Ertegun, a young Turk with an immigrant's passion for the African-American music he heard in the rigidly segregated Washington, D.C. of the 1940s, soon recognized that "all popular music stems from Black music, be it jazz or rock n' roll or rap." He exported these endemic sounds to England , where they merged with the European sensibility, and he imported that fusion back across the ocean. It was a revolutionary new genre, single-handedly influencing the future direction of contemporary music. American Masters profiles the man who discovered Ray Charles, introduced Eric Clapton to Aretha Franklin and fell asleep on Mick Jagger.
Read the review by Bill Gardner, Morning Radio Personality, KOOL 94.5
April 2007
Masterpiece Theatre "Bleak House"
Sundays at 9 p.m. beginning April 22
Charles Dickens' complex tale of young love, murder and the quest for a mystery-man's identity unfolds in a sumptuous six-part adaptation. The story features some of the most famous plot twists in literary history, including a case of human spontaneous combustion and an infamous inheritance dispute that's tied up for generations in the dysfunctional English courts, while lawyers consume the assets of the estate. The cast includes Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Anna Maxwell Martin and Nathaniel Parker.
In this episode, the wards of the notorious lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce come to Bleak House to live with John Jarndyce, together with orphan Esther Summerson. Nemo, a destitute copyist in the case, dies, but not before attracting the intense interest of Lady Dedlock and her husband's malevolent lawyer, Tulkinghorn.
Read the review by Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen
February 2007
Nature “Underdogs”
February 4 at 8 p.m.
Holly and Herbie had been in serious trouble throughout their young lives; they're lucky merely to have made it beyond adolescence. So it may come as a surprise that one of them now has a successful career in law enforcement, while the other is herding sheep. Holly and Herbie, by the way, are dogs. They'll soon be TV stars, too as Nature presents the first reality makeover program aimed at helping canines overcome early adversity. It took love, skill and tenacity to change these incorrigible animals into the wonderful working dogs they were meant to be. By the end of the film, each dog will have a new home.
Read the review by JoAnn Spencer, Arizona Humane Society
Masterpiece Theatre
"Dracula"
Sunday, February 11 at 9 p.m.
Bram Stoker's infamously menacing, and famously undead, character comes to life in this new television adaptation by Stewart Harcourt. Dracula travels to England and becomes a shadowy, but powerful figure in the lives of the unhappily married Lucy and her husband, the secretive Holmwood. Seward, Lucy's first love, along with Professor Van Helsing, discovers the dark and horrifying truth about Dracula's true identity and bloodthirsty ways. The cast includes Marc Warren (Band of Brothers), Sophia Myles (Miss Marple) and David Suchet (Poirot).
Read the review by Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen mystery book stores.
