TV Picks 02.08.2009

SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

ABC In Voluntown, Conn., the makeover team and local builders and volunteers build a new house in one week for Carol Girard and her children Lucas, Hannah, Jacqueline and Adam. The family’s home burned down in 2007, and last June, husband Thomas, 45, drowned, and eldest son Marc, 18, died trying to save him. Girard was a charity volunteer, despite losing his job, and Marc was studying for the priesthood.


MONDAY, 9 p.m.

American Experience: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

PBS Lincoln scholars discuss actor John Wilkes Booth, who shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865. They discuss Booth’s motives, his plotting, the crime and the manhunt for him. Booth had hoped to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate prisoners of war; but when the conflict ended, he decided to try to kill Lincoln, the vice president and the secretary of state. Cornered at a Virginia farm on April 26, Booth refused to surrender, was shot and died soon after. Advisory: TV-PG.


TUESDAY, 11 a.m.

EWTN New Season Preview

EWTN Doug Keck discusses new shows for spring. Re-airs 4 p.m. Saturday.


TUESDAY, 8 p.m.

Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown

ABC In this animated special from 1975, Charles Schulz’s beloved “Peanuts” comic-strip kids get into Valentine’s Day comic misadventures. Following that is a 2002 special, “A Charlie Brown Valentine,” in which Charlie Brown pines for the Little Red-Haired Girl and doesn’t notice that Peppermint Patty likes him.


TUESDAY, 10 p.m.

How the Earth Was Made

HISTORY This new series’ first episode is “The Driest Place on Earth,” a study of the Atacama Desert, a 600-mile coastal strip in northern Chile that the Andes and the Chilean Coastal Range shield from rainfall.


WEDNESDAY, 9 p.m.

Looking for Lincoln

PBS On the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday, experts cite his associates’ testimony as they debate his views about race, equality and religion. Advisory: TV-PG.


FRIDAY, 10:30 p.m.

Billy the Kid Returns

FAMILYLAND TV In this 1938 Western, singing cowboy star Roy Rogers plays both outlaw Billy the Kid and a Billy look-alike who, after the Kid’s demise, carries on his defense of homesteaders’ property rights.


SATURDAY, 7:30 a.m.

CatholicTV Kids Club

CATHOLIC TV An episode of the 1950s family sitcom “Ozzie and Harriet” precedes “The Great Bible Discovery” and the animated show “Bernadette, Princess of Lourdes.”

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.

French Connection in Texas

San Antonio boasts a nearly exact replica of France’s Lourdes Grotto. A shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe is also present on the grounds of the Missionary Association of Mary Immaculate.