Dial Direct

Austin City Limits: The O’Kanes and Highway 101

Sunday, January 17, at 6 p.m.

Jamie O’Hara and Kieran Kane kick off the season premiere of Austin City Limits with performances of their acoustic-based country hits, “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You” and “That’s All Right, Mama.” The program also includes a rousing performance by Paulette Carlson (pictured), lead vocalist for Highway 101, singing “The Bed You Made for Me” and “Whiskey, if You Were a Woman.”



Masterpiece Theatre: Fortunes of War

Sundays at 9 p.m. beginning January 17

Based on Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, this compelling new series is set against the vivid canvas of civilian life in wartime Europe and is a remarkable portrait of marriage. World War II forms an uneasy background to the tensions between Guy Pringle, played by Kenneth Branagh, an artistic, passionate, idealist, and his new wife, Harriett (Emma Thompson).



American Playhouse: Strange Interlude

Monday-Wednesday, January 18-20, at 9 p.m.

The season opener of American Playhouse stars (pictured from left) Ken Howard, David Dukes, Edward Petherbridge and Glenda Jackson in a three-part miniseries based on Eugene O’Neill’s intense psychological drama, “Strange Interlude.” The play, for which O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize in 1928, centers on Nina Leeds, who, distraught when her fiance does not return from the war, marries a man she does not love and bears the child of yet another man. Rosemary Harris and Jose Ferrer also star.



Frontline: Praise the Lord

Friday, January 29, at 8 p.m.

Jim and Tammy Bakker were the principal players in a sexua and financial scandal that nearly destroyed the television evangelical movement. In the season premiere of this award-winning series, Frontline relives the rise and fall of the Bakkers, focusing on why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.