CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
This 1969 holiday special shows up, fittingly, on a holiday weekend – but the wrong one. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, yet here we are, with the first network prime-time Christmas special of the year. When I’m still digesting my turkey and awash in leftovers, is it too early to say “Bah humbug”? Yet as TV memories go, for aging Boomers (and all Boomers are), this one’s quite evocative.
Nickelodeon, 8:00 p.m. ET
SERIES FINALE: This Nickelodeon sitcom, starring Miranda Cosgrove, has been so popular with tweens that Michelle Obama, a fan of the show because of her daughters, guest starred in one episode. (She’s not the first First Lady to take her message to a sitcom, either: Nancy Reagan, pushing her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign in the 1980s, appeared on Diff’rent Strokes opposite Gary Coleman. As they say: Diff’rent Strokes for different folks.) Anyway, iCarly ends its run tonight, with a special one-hour episode called "iGoodbye." But Nickelodeon, one of the savviest cable marketers, isn’t letting the show’s audience down, or letting it escape. Supporting player Jennette McCurdy, who plays Sam Puckett, is set to star in a new Nick sitcom, Sam & Cat. And who’s playing Cat? Ariana Grande, who plays Cat Valentine in another Nickelodeon comedy, Victorious. Pro baseball should have as effective a farm system.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Audrey Hepburn stars, in this 1964 film musical, as a cockney street waif transformed by an elocution professor (Rex Harrison) into a fashionable, presentable young woman. Harrison talks, rather than sings his songs, but even that’s more than you can say for the luminous Hepburn: Her singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who did the same for Natalie Wood in the film version of West Side Story. What is it about Nixons and secret recordings?
CBS, 9:30 p.m. ET
This isn’t your normal SpongeBob SquarePants TV cartoon. It’s not a cartoon at all – but a stop-animation holiday special, an intentional and affectionate nod to some of the classic holiday TV specials of the 1960s. It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! has an appropriately holiday-themed plot: Plankton, in his latest scheme to discover the secret formula for the Krabby Patty recipe, floods the already-underwater town of Bikini Bottom with fruitcakes. Those, too, have a secret ingredient: They’re laced with “jerktonium,” and eating a slice turns everyone from nice to naughty. Seeing SpongeBob and company as three-dimensional puppets is fun, but parents, beware: Fast on the heels of this special is a barrage of SpongeBob SquarePants holiday merchandise, including new CDs and DVDs.
Cinemax, 10:00 p.m. ET
In this penultimate Season 1 episode of Hunted, the true target of billionaire Jack Turner (Patrick Malahide) is revealed, and I’ll be damned – it’s a dam! And what does a dam have to do with a Pakistani presidential candidate? Enough, it seems, to make this week’s installment an entertaining hybrid of the water-rights plot of Chinatown and the patsy-assassin plot of The Parallax View. Melissa George stars.