It’s the start of a holiday weekend, and everyone – well, everyone except those slaving away to produce a daily newspaper – is taking a few days off. And that includes cable TV network programming executives. What better way to lazily fill a day of airtime than with a series marathon? There are a bunch of them this weekend, and here’s a quick look at some of the highlights:
Saturday
— Discovery Channel is tag-teaming “American Loggers” (oooh, watch them rape the planet!) from 1 p.m. to 6, and then the always awesome “Mythbusters” takes over from 6 p.m. until noon Sunday.
— MSNBC has a day full of its shamefully engrossing prison doc “Lockup” starting at noon and running into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
— TV Land is doing a day of “Married With Children” from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. All these years later, I still hate that show.
— USA is all about “House” from 9 a.m. to midnight. I hear characters are welcome.
— VH1 has “I Love the New Millennium” from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Those are always good if you’re bored and flipping channels and want something nice and disposable while you have 10 minutes to kill.
Sunday
— Animal Planet has a day of extreme angling with “River Monsters” from 2 p.m. to 5 a.m. And no, they’re not real monsters. Just piranhas and giant catfish and stuff like that.
— Discovery Channel has its very cool “Planet Earth” docu-series from 1 p.m. until 3 a.m. Totally worth watching if you have HD.
— Discovery Health has a day full of bloodied, mangled bodies with “Trauma: Life in the ER” from noon until 4 a.m.
— Spike TV is airing the greatest miniseries ever made, “Band of Brothers,” from 3 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. That’s only like six episodes, so watch out, it’ll leave you hanging.
— As if real-life sex crimes aren’t horrific enough, USA has a day of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” from 9 a.m. until 4 a.m. How much you wanna bet next season they’ll have a new episode about a girl kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 18 years?
Monday
— Animal Planet has “Whale Wars” from 9 a.m until 8 p.m. For eco-nuts, they’re pretty entertaining.
— Discovery Channel has a day of “Dirty Jobs” from 9 a.m. until 3 a.m. Tuesday. That’s a whole lot of raw sewage to wade through.
— Food Network has its watered-down “Top Chef” ripoff “Chopped” from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. I guess that’s more of a half marathon.
— History Channel gets bloody with a day of “Gangland” from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
— MTV has its safe-sex scare-fest, “16 and Pregnant,” from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m.
— Spike TV has a full day of “Band of Brothers” from 10 a.m. to midnight. That’s the miniseries’ entire run, at least.
— SyFy gets spooky with “Ghost Hunters” from 8 a.m to 7 p.m.
— TBS has “The Office” from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. for those who are starting to miss their cubicle.
— Travel Channel has a day of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., capped by a new episode at 10 p.m. This will be my default channel for the day.
Oh, there’s other stuff too. “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader,” “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Dance Your Ass Off,” and a ton more, but I trust you’re a discerning reader/viewer with a smidgen of taste, so I skipped the stupid ones. You’re welcome.
