TV Picks 12.13.2009

SUNDAY, 7:30 p.m.

Pope Benedict XVI

CATHOLICTV At 11 a.m., Vatican TV’s Weekly Papal Audience will air Pope Benedict’s Dec. 9 weekly audience in Paul VI hall. At noon, Octava Dies recaps the Holy Father’s week as well as goings-on in Vatican City.


SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

White Christmas

AMC Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Jagger and Danny Kaye co-starred in this 1954 musical comedy in which Crosby sings the title song and other Irving Berlin hits. It was partly based on the also Christmas-themed Holiday Inn (1942), which follows at 10:45 p.m. and starred Crosby, Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds.


SUNDAY, THURSDAY

All-Star Holiday Cookies

FOOD NETWORK At 8 a.m. Sunday and noon Thursday, Food Network stars Paula Deen, Ellie Krieger, Sandra Lee and others make candy cane cookies and many more of their Christmas favorites.


MONDAY, THURSDAY

Antiques Roadshow

PBS At 8 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Thursday, this episode, “Roadshow Remembers,” recalls times the show’s expert appraisers have spotted real treasures among the often ordinary objects that hopeful members of the public bring them. A re-air.


TUESDAY, 8 p.m.

Nova: The Spy Factory

PBS In this documentary based on his 2008 book The Shadow Factory, James Bamford describes the National Security Agency’s massive intelligence gathering against American citizens and around the world. He says the agency failed to put together pieces of data about al Qaeda that might have prevented 9/11. A re-air.


THURSDAY, 8 p.m.

Christmas in Connecticut

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES This Christmas season fun favorite from 1945 stars Barbara Stanwyck as a magazine “homemaking expert” who must use her supposed skills when she has to host her boss and a war hero for Christmas.


FRIDAY, 8 p.m.

Frosty the Snowman

CBS Beloved Catholic entertainer Jimmy Durante narrated this 1969 Christmas animated special about a snowman and child who go to the North Pole. At 8:30 p.m., in the 1992 animated special Frosty Returns, Frosty battles enemies of Christmas.


SATURDAY, 8 p.m.

A Time to Remember

EWTN Thomas Travers wrote and directed this 1987 drama about an Italian American boy, 12, whose dreams of becoming an opera singer fade when bullies cause an accident that leaves him voiceless. At his parish’s Christmas pageant, the Blessed Mother and Baby Jesus appear to him, and he is able to sing a carol to them.

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California
.