TV Picks

All times eastern

DAILY, 8 a.m.

Family Rosary with Sacred Scripture

FAMILYLAND TV One of the Blessed Mother’s 15 Promises of the Rosary is, “I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.” We can join in this Familyland Rosary every morning.

SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

ABC Ty Pennington, his crew, local builders and volunteers construct a new home for the Kevin and Nila Thibodeaux family of Brookings County, S.D., who have always helped their neighbors even as they care for their daughter Siehera, 12, and struggle to pay the bills for her four heart surgeries for a birth defect their insurance company calls a pre-existing condition. Advisory: TV-PG.

SUNDAY, 9 p.m., 10 p.m.

Engineering the Impossible

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL At 9 p.m., we see how the builders of the Colosseum in Rome 2,000 years ago pioneered building materials and construction techniques still used today. At 10 p.m., we ponder the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built around 2500 B.C. with enough stone for six Empire State Buildings.

MONDAY, 9 p.m.

History Detectives

PBS This show’s fifth season premieres with its experts examining a 1913 painting for a women’s suffrage march, a recording of the 1930’s “Amos ’n’ Andy” radio show and a projection screen that might have had a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Advisory: TV-PG.

TUESDAY, 9 p.m.

Shaq’s Big Challenge

ABC In this series premiere, pro basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, doctors, a personal trainer and experts encourage six kids ages 11-14, who check in at anywhere from 182 to 285 pounds, to lose weight via healthful eating and regular exercise.

WEDNESDAY, 8 p.m.

Bear Island

PBS Among the thick population of grizzly bears of Chichagof Island in southeast Alaska, this new National Geographic special deploys, for the first time, Greg Marshall’s Terrestrial Crittercam, which lets us follow the bears’ daily routine from their vantage point.

THURSDAY, 8 p.m., live

Life on the Rock

EWTN Franciscan Father Francis Mary’s guest is Catholic Answers apologist Tim Staples, a convert and former Marine whose many talks, books and tapes have “helped thousands of people find their way home to the Church.”

FRIDAY, 10 a.m.

Secrets of the Southwest

TRAVEL CHANNEL Explore Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, gooseneck mazes and the Painted Desert’s dinosaur tracks. A re-air.

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.