Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
Portlandia fans, take special note: On tonight’s new episode, Homer and Marge get some new neighbors. They’re from Portland, and they’re aggressively trendy – and their voices are provided by Portlandia stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. What could be better? Well, how’s this? Their son is played, vocally, by Patton Oswalt – who already demonstrated his animated voice-work chops by starring as Remy the culinary rat in Ratatouille.
AMC, 8:00 p.m. ET
In honor of the holidays, AMC is showing this classic 1947 movie, starring Edmund Gwenn as an Oscar-worthy department-store Santa, at 8 p.m. ET tonight. And again tomorrow night. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. In TV terms, I guess, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Maureen O’Hara and a very young Natalie Wood co-star.
Sundance, 8:00 p.m. ET
With so many Sunday night series already shut down for the holidays, there’s time to look around and see what else is on – including this 1983 thriller, made at the beginning of the home-computer era. That’s evidenced easy by the bright-type-on-dark-screen prompts, the high-pitched modem sounds, and the “war room” graphics that are charmingly basic – if not BASIC. Next year, WarGames will be 30 years old, but the story itself has aged very well. So has star Matthew Broderick, it should be pointed out.
Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET
It sure looks like love: Dexter (Michael C. Hall) has shown a protective streak towards Yvonne Strahovski’s Hannah. He’s resisted the request by his sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) to kill Hannah for her string of past murders, slept with her (Hannah, not Debra, though this season even that was a possibility), and, last week, made sure Hannah’s father wouldn’t be able to blackmail her. But this week, information from the father ends up in Debra’s hands, which makes Dexter’s love life, and family life, even more complicated. Especially at Christmas…
Showtime, 10:00 p.m. ET
Last week, Carrie (Claire Danes) was captured by Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban) – something else she now has in common with Brody (Damian Lewis), besides having a somewhat tenuous grip on both reality and morality. She was released, but rather than running to safety, she ran back into the lion’s den, looking for Nazir herself. Crazy? Well, she was given that diagnosis last season…