TV Picks June 8-14, 2008

All Times Eastern


SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Nature: Snowflake:

The White Gorilla

PBS After locals in Equatorial Guinea killed his parents in 1967, “Snowflake,” an albino western lowland gorilla, was brought to Barcelona. Before he died in 2003, studies of Snowflake and his companion Muni helped scientists see gorillas’ intelligence and gentleness, create more natural zoo enclosures and understand wild gorillas’ nature.


SUNDAY, 9 p.m.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

DISCOVERY Tonight’s 60-minute episodes are the first two in a six-part series that continues same time June 15 and concludes June 22. Archival footage and interviews with astronauts and ground crew personnel reprise the bold achievements of the Mercury, Apollo and Gemini missions and profile today’s space efforts.


MONDAY, 4 p.m.

Designed to Sell: Top 35 Selling Secrets

HOME & GARDEN TV This show’s teams in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., combine to give families 35 secrets of real estate, design and handyman professionals.


WEDNESDAY, 9 p.m.

The Cleveland Orchestra in Performance

PBS This 90-minute program takes us to the beautiful Baroque Basilica of Sts. Florian and Augustine at the Abbey of St. Florian, outside Linz, Austria, to hear the Cleveland Orchestra, under Austria-born Franz Welser-Most, perform Anton Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony. Bruckner (1824-1896) was a choir boy, chorister, teacher and master organist at the abbey and is buried in the basilica beneath the organ he long played.


WEDNESDAYS, 7 p.m.

Be Not Afraid Family Hour, with Family Rosary

FAMILYLAND TV These shows from the Ohio-based Apostolate of Family Consecration combine catechesis and prayer so the whole family can learn the Faith, hear from Pope John Paul II and Blessed Mother Teresa and say the Rosary together.


Life on the Rock

EWTN Tonight’s guests, the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, founded by Cardinal John O’Connor in 1997, began with four sisters and now number 76. Their average age is 28. They live out the Dominican motto, “To contemplate and give to others the fruit of your contemplation,” through teaching, catechesis and evangelization, spreading “the attractive witness of a life lived wholly for Christ.” Eucharistic adoration and devotion to Mary underlie their preaching and teaching of Catholic Truth.


THURSDAY-SATURDAY

U.S. Open Golf Championship

ESPN, NBCThe Torrey Pines South Golf Course in La Jolla, Calif., hosts this year’s edition of a classic first staged in 1895. Tune in to ESPN at 11 a.m. Thursday and 1 p.m. Friday, and go to NBC at 4 p.m. Saturday. (Final round on NBC at 3 p.m. Sunday.)


Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.