Between network, cable, and streaming, the modern television landscape is vast. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 26 – Jan. 1. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
THE YEAR: 2022 9 p.m. on ABC. For more than a decade, ABC and its anchors have provided an annual look back at the year’s biggest news stories. (Whether looking back at the past year sounds like a gift or a nightmare is, of course, up to viewers to decide.) The 2022 schedule includes segments about pickleball, Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster saga, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Tuesday
MOONFALL (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. You know you’re in for a certain kind of movie when the trailer shows characters yelling “Wait a minute!” in three different scenes. And you know you’re in for a “hold on” movie when it’s directed by Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”). Both things are true for “Moonfall,” a sci-fi disaster movie about two former astronauts (Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson) who join forces to save the planet after a nerdy amateur researcher (John Bradley) discovers that the moon is headed for a collision with the earth. In a review in the DailyExpertNews, Ben Kenigsberg wrote that the film’s otherworldly element “flirts with the transcendent goofball”, but that “Emmerich spoils it by cutting to a useless Earth narrative thread.”
AMERICAN MASTERS: GROUCHO & CAVETT 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). “If Groucho never existed, we would feel a lack in the world of comedy, like the planet in the solar system that astronomers say should Those words, credited to TV host Dick Cavett, kick off this feature-length documentary, which looks at the friendship—and mentorship—between Cavett and pioneering comedian Groucho Marx. Through new interviews with Cavett and archival footage of Marx (who died in 1977), the documentary follows the relationship between Marx and Cavett from their first meeting, at the funeral of playwright George S. Kaufman in 1961, to Marx’s death. bridge between two generations of comedy.
Wednesday
THE 45TH ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS 8 p.m. on CBS. This year’s Kennedy Center Honors recognized a multigenre, multigenerational group of performers: the singer Gladys Knight; the actor and filmmaker George Clooney; the rock band U2; the singer-songwriter Amy Grant; and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León. The ceremony earlier this month, which will air on CBS Wednesday, featured tributes to the honorees from a range of famous faces, including Garth Brooks, Mickey Guyton, Ariana DeBose, Matt Damon, Sheryl Crow, Jason Moran, Alicia Hall Moran and Eddie Vedder.
REAR WINDOW (1954) and THE WINDOW (1949) 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TCM. Here’s a new midcentury mystery pairing: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” and “The Window,” a 1949 film noir directed by Ted Tetzlaff, who was the cinematographer on Hitchcock’s “Notorious” a few years earlier. These two movies also have somewhat similar settings. The classic “Rear Window” casts James Stewart as a housebound photographer who believes a murder has been committed in a neighboring house; “The Window” is about a nine-year-old boy (Bobby Driscoll) who suspects the same thing.
Thursday
READY PLAYER ONE (2018) 11 p.m. on TBS. To see two vastly different sides of Steven Spielberg, consider pairing his semi-autobiographical period drama, “The Fabelmans” (in theaters now), with his sci-fi bonanza “Ready Player One,” a movie that manages to to be nostalgic despite being set in 2045. That’s because the dystopian world uses late 20th and early 21st century pop culture as its building blocks. The story, adapted from Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel of the same name, centers on a young man (Tye Sheridan) who searches for a treasure left behind by a dead virtual reality world builder (Mark Rylance).
GONE GIRL (2014) 7:25 p.m. on HBO. Musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, of the band Nine Inch Nails, composed the scores of two films currently playing: Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” and Sam Mendes’s “Empire of Light”. For an earlier example of their film score, see this thriller by David Fincher, about a husband and wife (played by Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) whose lives go off the rails when the wife, Amy, goes missing and the husband, Nick, becomes a suspect in her disappearance.
THE STORY OF A SOLDIER (1984) 8 p.m. on TCM. Playwright Charles Fuller won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “A Soldier’s Play,” about an investigation into the murder of a Black Army sergeant at a secluded Louisiana military base in the 1940s. And he wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation, which was directed by Norman Jewison and scored by Herbie Hancock. Fuller passed away in October, making the end of the year a poignant time to revisit the movie.
Saturday
NEW YEAR’S EVE SHOW on different networks. How do you approach your New Year’s programming? With sugar? To see MILEY’S NEW YEARS PARTYpresented by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton, at 10:30 p.m. on NBC. With extra twang? What did you think about LIVE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE: NASHVILLE’S BIG BASHpresented by singers Jimmie Allen and Elle King and presenter Rachel Smith, at 10:30 p.m. on CBS. With a Times Square neon glaze? Attempt DICK CLARK’S NEW YEARS ROCKIN’ EVE WITH RYAN SEACREST 2023 at 10:30 p.m. on ABC. For those without cable TV, or who just want to watch the New York ball drop with minimal fuss, there’s a free live stream of the Times Square scene on timessquarenyc.org.
Sunday
DIONNE WARWICK: DON’T MAKE ME OVER (2023) 9 p.m. on DailyExpertNews. This new documentary about singer Dionne Warwick’s art and activism combines archival footage with an impressive roster of interviewees, including Quincy Jones, Gladys Knight, Olivia Newton-John, Smokey Robinson, Elton John, Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan and Alicia Keys. The Doc received solid reviews when it opened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year; it will make its wider debut on Sunday.