TV Worth Watching

Frontline

Fridays at 9 p.m.

This month Frontline investigates the invasion of Grenada, the man who shot John Lennon (pictured), the airline industry, and a penitentiary in New Mexico. In Operation Urgent Fury on February 5, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh explores one of Ronald Reagan’s greatest triumphs, the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh’s reporting reveals an inept U.S. military operation and severely questions whether the students needed rescuing at all. On February 12, Frontline goes inside the mind of The Man Who Shot John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, who killed the former Beatle in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder believing it would make him famous. Then, on February 19, Your Flight is Cancelled probes the air-traffic dilemma inside America’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsdale Field, in the control tower and behind the ticket counter. The special looks at America’s airline industry and how it has become a nightmare of delays, cancellations, and near misses. The final Frontline this month, Shakedown in Santa Fe on February 26, returns to the New Mexico penitentiary eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in U.S. history to probe the continuing struggles among the inmates, guards, wardens, and reformers for control of one of the country’s most dangerous prisons.

Wonderworks: Anne of Green Gables

Saturdays at 7 p.m.

When an elderly bachelor farmer and his spinster sister decide to adopt a child to help with chores, the orphanage sends Anne Shirley, a mischievious, red-haired, freckle-faced young girl who wants desperately to be loved but continually finds herself in trouble. Megan Follows (pictured) stars as Anne in this Emmy Award-winning film, with Colleen Dewhurst as the spinster sister, Marilla, and Richard Farnsworth as her brother, Matthew.

National Geographic Special: Australia’s Twilight of the Dreamtime

Wednesday, February 10, at 7 p.m.

This new sixty-minute special travels to a beautiful and remote corner of northern Australia, where an aborigine people called the Gagudju live out the twilight of their culture.

Nature: Hawaii: Islands of the Fire Goddess

Sunday, February 14, at 7 p.m.

The Hawaiian Islands are an evolutionary showcase and a conservationist’s nightmare. Nature examines the evolution of a Hawaiian island, from underwater volcano to snow-capped mountain to coral atoll. The program also looks at the effects the arrival of man and the colonization of the islands had on the plant and animal life there.

Hollywood Legends: Steve McQueen: Man on the Edge

Wednesday, February 17, at 8 p.m.

In both his career and personal life, Steve McQueen was unconventional and determined. Using film clips and interviews with Karl Maiden, Neile McQueen Toffel, and Norman Jewison, this film profiles the actor some called “distant” and “antisocial.” Numerous clips from films, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Sand Pebbles, Love With the Proper Stranger, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Reivers, Cincinnati Kid, and Bullitt, demonstrate McQueen’s magnetism.

The West of the Imagination: The Wild Riders

Thursday, February 25, at 8 p.m.

The cowboy is one of the most enduring images of the Western frontier. This episode in the six-part KERA production presents the lives of Frederic Remington (played by Jerome Dempsey, pictured), the Yale-educated artist, and Charles Russell, the Montana painter who worked on the range for eleven years. The program contrasts dynamism of Remington’s art with the relaxed quality of Russell’s work.