TV Picks May 11 – 17, 2008

All Times Eastern


SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

ABC Host Ty Pennington, his design team, local builders and volunteers construct a new, handicapped-accessible house for Paul and Renee Giunta of Maynard, Mass. Brain-damaged since a traffic accident in March 2006 on the day their daughter Brianna was born, Paul has been staying with his parents in an accessible retirement community; now he and Renee, baby Brianna and sons Dylan and Cameron can reunite at home.


SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Ocean Voyagers

ANIMAL PLANET This 2007 documentary follows a giant humpback whale mama and her not exactly tiny baby in the South Pacific as they brave danger from sharks, fishing boats’ equipment and Japanese whalers. Advisory: Scenes of imperilment.


MONDAY, 7 a.m.

The Real West: Trailblazers & Scouts

HISTORY Follow the trails of Jim Bridger (1804-1881), Kit Carson (1809-1868) and other frontier trappers, guides and scouts, as well as the route of explorer John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) down the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in 1869. Advisory: TV-PG.


TUESDAY, 9 p.m.

Frontline: Storm Over Everest

PBS In this two-hour show, mountain climber and filmmaker David Breashears recounts the events of May 10, 1996, when five climbers died after a sudden, blinding storm trapped teams above 26,000 feet on Mount Everest. Breashears recounts life-and-death decisions and says, “It’s what the mountain reveals about us that has any lasting value.” Newsom photo


TUESDAY, FRIDAY

Life Is Worth Living

EWTN At 3:30 a.m. Tuesday and 9 p.m. Friday, see this episode of the beloved Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s 1950’s hit TV show, “Life Is Worth Living,” in which he discusses Our Lady of Fatima’s miracles and her ever-essential message of prayer and penance in the context of the battle between good and evil.


FRIDAY, 9:30 p.m.

Lilies of the Field

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES Ralph Nelson directed, and Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skala starred in, this touching 1963 drama-comedy in which a man returning home from the Army stops for water, meets German nuns recently arrived in New Mexico and ends up building them a chapel with the help of local Mexican Americans.


SATURDAY, 10:30 p.m.

Guilty of Treason

FAMILYLAND TV As he made Hungary’s Jozsef Mindszenty (1892-1975) a cardinal in 1946, Pope Pius XII told him, “Among the 32 [new cardinals], you will be the first to suffer the martyrdom whose symbol this red color is.” Charles Bickford plays the heroic cardinal in this 1950 drama about his torture and imprisonment by atheistic communists beginning in 1948. Hungary’s noble freedom fighters liberated the cardinal in 1956.


Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.

Liverpool’s Cathedral Lane

The city best known as the birthplace of the Beatles — feted this year as a European Capital of Culture — is home to two grand cathedrals. Their proximity on Hope Street reminds Liverpool’s visitors that Christian unity is a thing to pray for: One cathedral is Catholic, the other Anglican. By Julian Worker.