Here's a fearless (and rather obvious) prediction for what could be a pivotal week on Fox's American Idol. Regardless of what happens on the next performance show (Wednesday, 8/7c), if America's vote endangers any of the girls — none of whom have been sent home yet (sorry, guys, especially Burnell) — the judges will almost certainly use their season's one "save."
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Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: [SPOILER ALERT for anyone who's fallen behind on Scandal] I'm a loyal reader of your column, and always enjoy hearing your well-thought-out and articulate opinions on TV's hottest topics. I'm writing to you for the first time now because I wanted to know your take on the latest installments of Scandal. I saw in your last column the tag line "Scandal is the new Revenge," and I agree Scandal has been far more gripping lately than Revenge.
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The world is Sir David Attenborough's playground, which he has revealed on camera in all of its natural wonder with irrepressible enthusiasm for the last 60 years, forging a career that encompasses what he calls "the golden age of natural history filmmaking." His breakthrough TV programs include 1979's epic Life on Earth, which launched a series of "Life" specials, and such recent phenoms as Planet Earth and Frozen Planet (although Discovery Channel replaced his narration with American actors for U.S. broadcast).
PBS' Nature celebrates his astonishing milestones over the next three Wednesdays with a miniseries, Attenborough's Life Stories (check tvguide.com listings), which functions as a visual history of how this sort of nature programming has evolved with the help of technological breakthroughs.
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Happy New TV Year! With the brief holiday programming pause about to be over, it's already time to say goodbye to one of last year's better series: the evocative second season of BBC America's Golden Globe-nominated The Hour. A ticking-clock deadline fuels the suspense in Wednesday's gripping finale (9/8c). With showtime fast approaching for a new edition of the fictional '50s TV newsmagazine, The Hour's co-anchors find themselves embroiled in controversy and peril.
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They say "Everything's Bigger in Texas," which happens to be the episode title for the premiere of Bravo's Texas-set ninth season of Top Chef (10/9c). And it also may explain why a ginormous platoon of 29 chef-testants descends on the historic Alamo for the first round of competition, and why the process of narrowing the field to a Top 16 can't even be contained within the first pulse-pounding episode.
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