There’s only one thing on TV in the next seven days that really matters to me, and that’s the Super Bowl.  What’s annoying me a bit right now is I planned a vacation late last year and never thought about the date of the Super Bowl so now I will have to find a sports bar or sit in my hotel watching it on a small TV.  Some of you get what I’m saying, planning a vacation around watching the big game seems like a perfectly valid choice; for the rest of you, here’s what else you might want to watch this week.

How I Met Your Mother (8:00 PM Monday CBS *200th Episode*) has been torture for me this season, I’m sure someone somewhere thinks the idea of the entire season (thus far anyway) taking place the weekend of Barney and Robin’s wedding seems like a good idea; being stuck in a wedding that goes on forever is not my idea of a good time, I’ve been there and done that, it was called my twenties.  You know, that time of life when all your friends are getting married and it seems like you are always either going to a wedding or planning to go to a wedding or buying a suit for a wedding or finding a date for a wedding, or buying a gift for a wedding, or trying to figure out how long you have to stay at the wedding.  Anyway, I think you get the picture.  I’ve been a fan of the show for seven of the eight seasons so I’m hanging in there to the (bitter?) end.

The Following (9:00 PM Monday Fox) is one of those shows I thought I would like, then couldn’t get into, but then took the time to watch again over the summer and now I am a fan.  Kevin Bacon (mmmmm Bacon) plays a gritty FBI agent who is after a stone cold serial killer played by James Purefoy who is as great in this role as he was in HBO’s Rome.  The series is clever, gritty and suspenseful and with Bacon and Purefoy there’s no lack of a charismatic star as in certain other crime dramas.

Amish: American Experience (8:00 PM Tuesday KQED) tells the story of the religious group in their own words, the PBS website describes this program as part history and part observational documentary; if it is like every other episode of American Experience it will be artfully executed and well worth the time to watch.

Banshee (10:00 PM Friday Max) tells the heartwarming story of a small Pennsylvania town, and how the residents coexist peacefully with the local Amish community and Native American tribe.  Actually that was a lie, the show is basically a bloodbath; non-stop action from start to finish, great characters, great story telling and a clever premise.  There are Indians, townspeople and Amish but this TV world will look little like the Amish country of American Experience.  The program is into its second season, but you can purchase season one from Amazon, and Comcast has episodes on demand as well.  Oh, for those who are interested in this sort of thing, season one episode three has one of the best fight scenes I have seen anywhere.

And of course Super Bowl XLVIII is this Sunday, and the Sochi Olympics are coming soon!

 

– John Morton

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