Weekly TV Picks

by Daniel J. Engler, Register Correspondent Wednesday, Sep 27, 2006 11:00 AM Comment

Hell’s House

Familyland TV, 3:30 p.m.

Early in their careers, Pat O’Brien and Bette Davis starred in this 1932 movie drama about a youth wrongly convicted of crime and sent to a cruelly run reformatory.

The Queen Family

PBS, 10:30 p.m.

Subtitled “Appalachian Tradition and Back Porch Music,” this 30-minute documentary tells the story of Irish American musician Mary Jane Queen, 92, and her eight children in western North Carolina’s highlands. They discuss their family ties and values and their singing and playing of mountain music derived from Irish, Scots and English traditions.

The Real West:

Stagecoach and

the Pony Express

History Channel, 7 a.m.

U.S. stagecoaches carried mail and passengers from the 1820s to around 1915. The Pony Express carried the U.S. mail the 1,966 miles between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif., from April 1860 through October 1861. A re-air. Advisory: TV-PG.

Secrets of the Dead:

Umbrella Assassin

PBS, 8 p.m.

Communism’s 100 million murder victims to date include exiled Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov, 49, slain in London in 1978. Formerly secret Bulgarian spy files now enable experts to uncover Soviet KGB complicity, name the probable assassin and identify the weapon as a ricin poison pellet fired from the tip of an umbrella.

Assisi in Silence

EWTN, 10 p.m.

Historical film footage and interviews tell how Bishop Giuseppe Nicolini and Father Aldo Brunacci, following secret orders from Pope Pius XII, hid many Jews in the monasteries and convents of German-occupied Assisi in 1943-44.

Life on the Rock

EWTN, 8 p.m.

Guests Greg and Jennifer Willits lead Rosary Army, a group that makes and gives away all-twine, knotted Rosaries, one per family. The group distributes thousands of these to military personnel, prisoners, hospital patients and others, and offers online rosary-making workshops and videos.

Remaking

American Medicine

PBS, 10 p.m.

This four-part weekly series explores how to protect patients from medical mistakes and infections and how to improve relationships between doctors, patients and families.

I Missed Flight 93

A&E, 6 p.m.

Three people booked onto United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, tell how they came to miss the plane that day and thus avoid the fatal hijacking. Advisory: TV-PG.

Dan Engler writes from

Santa Barbara, California.