Remote Patrol

Comments (0) By Joy Press Tuesday, Jan 10 2006

Sundance Film Festival Dailies
January 20 through 29 at 9 on Sundance

For those of us not lucky enough to be swanning around Park City, Utah, right now, Sundance will broadcast a nightly half-hour of news from the festival, followed by films from past years, like the January 29 pairing of Miguel Arteta's 2005 short Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?with Thomas Vinterberg's 2003 movie It's All About Love.

Bleak House
January 22 through February 26 at 9 on channel 13

This spectacular six-part adaptation of the lit classic feels more like a plush Jane Austen tale than Dickens, full of imprudent matches, trembling bodices, and an enfeebled aristocracy embodied by Lady Dedlock (the return of Gillian Anderson at her most delicate and dazzling). But plenty of Dickensian touches remain in this woeful tale of legal bureaucracy gone awry. Spontaneous combustion, bloodsucking lawyers, and a lovesick schemer named Guppy turn Masterpiece Theatre into must-see TV.

Crumbs
Thursdays at 9:30 on ABC

It's hard not to get sucked in by a sitcom that opens with Jane Curtin hissing into the phone, "It's me. Just thought I'd let you and your unibrowed whore know I'm getting out of this place in a few days." "This place" is a psych ward, and Curtin's character is returning home to her sons (one of whom is played by Fred Savage) and cheating husband (William Devane). The series centers on Savage's character, but it's still fun to watch Curtin in all her kooky fury.