TV Picks Oct. 7-13, 2007

All times Eastern


SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

Nature: Andes: The Dragon’s Back

PBS South America’s jagged Andes Mountains stretch 5,000 miles from the Amazon rain forest down to the Antarctic Ocean. They are home to glaciers, fjords, cloud forests and high deserts, and their wildlife denizens include condors, pumas, tiny pudu deer, tree-dwelling spectacled bears, and desert flamingos and penguins. A re-air.


MONDAY-FRIDAY, 3 a.m., 6:30 p.m. daily

Will You Be Left Behind?

EWTN In installments each day this week, Carl Olson and Thomas Curran explain Catholic doctrine about Christ’s Second Coming, the Church and the Kingdom of God, and expose the theological fallacies behind the Protestant errors of premillennial dispensationalism and “the Rapture.”


TUESDAY, 8 p.m.

Nova: Secrets of the Samurai Sword

PBS This new show follows 15 Japanese craftsmen through their six months of making a katana (samurai sword). Michael Notis explains the metallurgical principles behind the razor-sharp sword’s strength and beauty, and father-daughter team Fumon and Midori Tanaka demonstrate their amazing skills with sword and bow and arrow.


WEDNESDAY, 9 p.m.

Lost Worlds: Lost Superpower of the Bible

HISTORY CHANNEL This show delves into the history of the Hittites, uses computer graphics to re-create their world and asks experts about the Hittites’ sudden demise.


THURSDAY, 8 p.m., live

Life on the Rock

EWTN The topic of Father Francis Mary’s guest, Immaculee Ilibagiza, is, “Finding God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.” In 1994, she and seven other women survived the genocide in Rwanda only by hiding for 91 days in the bathroom of a pastor’s house. Her Left to Tell Charitable Foundation has raised more than $150,000 for Rwandan orphans, and Ilibagiza strives to help others overcome the traumas of war and mass murder.


FRIDAY, 6 a.m.

Classroom: Veterans Day / Labor Day

HISTORY CHANNEL Learn the history behind these American holidays.


SATURDAY, 3:30 p.m.

Boston College at Notre Dame

NBC The Boston College Eagles meet the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., in a battle of Catholic college football powerhouses.


SATURDAY, 10:30 p.m.

Santa Fe Trail

FAMILYLAND TV Hollywood luminaries such as future President Ronald Reagan, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn and Raymond Massey starred in this 1940 action film about the abolitionist crusade of John Brown of Osawatomie and the young West Point graduates who ended his seizure of the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, present-day West Va., in 1859.


Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.

Thomas’ Promises

Christopher Wolfe co-directs the Ralph McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies at Notre Dame. But now he is setting off on a new venture: starting a college that will give students a “unified, integrated conception of reality” based on the scholarship of Thomas Aquinas. By Monta Hernon.