Suddenly, my troubles seem easy...

Like clockwork each year, 100 million monarch butterflies set off on an incredible journey across North America, flying 2,000 miles to reach their remote destination: a tiny area high in the mountains of Mexico. How do the butterflies achieve this tremendous feat of endurance - and how, year after year, do the monarchs navigate with such hair's-breadth precision. NOVA flies along, visiting the spectacular locations the butterflies call home and meeting the dangers they encounter along the way...The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies...8PM

The "un-won" war that never ended...

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW's visits Madison, Wisconsin and Denver...Highlights include an heirloom 1938 Martin D-18 guitar, and an angry 1976 letter from Frank Sinatra to Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko, auctioned off for charity by Royko and now worth $15,000...7pm

Korean War veterans remember the late 1940s and early 1950s, when young men from all over the country were being shipped off to defend South Korea against the advancing Red Army in the north. UNFORGETTABLE: THE KOREAN WAR recalls the "un-won" war that never ended...9pm

Turkey legs are for eating, drum sticks are for pounding...

Here we are, the day before Thanksgiving and a long weekend of football and music on the tube...and some mighty fine music at that.

We start off with In Perforance at the White House - Country style, featuring the exquisite Alison Krauss, James Taylor and Kris Kristofferson, among others...7pm

Then on Thursday Austin City Limits presents highlights from the Americana Music Festival, featuring Lucinda Williams, Gregg Allman, Robert Plant, Emmy Lou Harris and the incomparable Avett Brothers...a fantastic show from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville...Thursday at 7pm

Friday night at 8pm the PBS Arts Festival continues with tenor Placido Domingo performing with the LA Opera in Il Postino...and Saturday it's back to ACL with the Monsters of Folk...starts at 10pm...

Sometimes you can't tell a book by...

On the night of November 26, 2008, 10 men armed with guns and grenades launched an assault on Mumbai with a military precision that left 166 dead. Six were Americans. Lashkar-e-Taiba,a Pakistani militant group associated with Pakistan's secretive intelligence agency, the ISI took credit for the attack. But the man who had been casing the city for two years, developing a blueprint for terror was David Coleman Headley...because he had the perfect cover: he was an American citizen. FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigates the mysterious circumstances behind Headley's rise from heroin dealer and U.S. government informant to master plotter of the 2008 attack on Mumbai...9pm

The subject is Woody Allen...

and people will talk. The second part of the American Masters doc features Diane Keaton, Louise Lasser, Scarlett Johansson, Martin Scorsese, Dick Cavett, Larry David and so many more. And there's inspiration and process...why and how he makes what he makes...there are outtakes, shots of Allen giving direction to his actors and stories of major rewrites, the portable typewriter he has typed out every movie script, play and New Yorker piece since he began writing...key inspirations, from Bob Hope to Ingmar Bergman. And there's countless classic scenes from movies we can't forget...the bank robbery scene from Take the Money and Run. The translation scene from Bananas. The beautiful Gershwin music from Manhattan. And so many, many scenes from Annie Hall.
American Masters has outdone itself with this documentary on Woody Allen, and you owe it to yourself if you love movies to drink it in...8pm
last night's part 1 will be rebroadcast tonight at 1am)

Woody Allen in the editing room? Really?

Darlene Love, Tina Turner, Bonnie Raitt, and Debbie Harry are just a few of the women profiled in the film about the story of Women Who Rock...8pm

The President and First Lady host IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE, featuring performers Smokey Robinson, Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, John Legend and others...9:30pm

Austin City Limits keeps the music rocking with highlights from the annual Americana Music Awards ceremony in Nashville... includes performances by Lucinda Williams, Gregg Allman and Robert Plant...Saturday at 10pm

For me the highlight of the weekend is this new, two-part documentary on Woody Allen...Exploring the ultimate "independent filmmaker's" writing habits, casting, directing and relationship with his actors, the editing room and his childhood haunts in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. New interviews with practically everyone who knows him...Woody Allen: American Masters...Sunday at 8pm

Direct from America's funny factory...

He's all over YOUTUBE and HULU...and he's hilarious. Wyatt Cenac reports for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as a fake news writer and correspondent. Fans can also find him doing standup on tour and in a soon-to-be released hour-long special...not quite sure Evan Smith knows what he's in for...check out OVERHEARD tonight at 8pm

Joe Hutto spent each day living as a turkey mother...

Deep in the wilds of Florida, writer and naturalist Joe Hutto was given the rare opportunity to raise wild turkeys from chicks...each day he went out and about as a "wild turkey" with his family of chicks, until the day came when he had to let his children grow up and go off on their own. As it turned out, this was harder than he ever imagined...and let's not even get into Thanksgiving!
Nature: My Life As A Turkey...7pm

Churchill had to make a very, very hard choice...

He could either trust the promises of the new French government that they would never hand over their ships to Hitler after their surrender. Or he could make sure that the ships never joined the German navy by destroying them himself. Secrets of the Dead: Churchill's Deadliest Decision reveals the darkest side of Britain's Finest Hour. This is the story of what Churchill did next, and why; and how 1,300 French sailors died as a result in what the French still call 'our Pearl Harbour'...7pm

The Globetrekker crew does Dallas, with stops at Cowboys Stadium and the Texas Book School Depository...Next it's Fort Worth and the National Cowgirl Museum and the historic Stockyards, then Austin and the State Capitol, followed by a sunset stroll across the Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the skies fill up with Mexican free-tail bats...see Texas from outsider's eyes...8pm

please pass the gravy...very carefully.

Plucked from ROADSHOW's appraisal archive, highlights feature an heirloom Tlingit Indian oil bowl and ladle, acquired by the owner's great-great-grandfather during a military posting to Sitka, Alaska, in 1877, valued at a jaw-dropping $250,000 to $300,000...ANTIQUES ROADSHOW special edition, "Tasty Treasures"...7pm

Followed by ANTIQUES ROADSHOW's "Simply the Best," showcasing objects deemed the finest examples of their kind ever seen...featuring a staggeringly rare 19th-century Rhode Island rifle and powderhorn, valued at $100,000 to $120,000...8pm

What would we do without them?

In the third installment of the fascinating series "America In Primetime", we
celebrate the "misfit"...unique characters who defied comic stereotypes and societal expectations to reflect America's diverse personalities. Interviews range from Alec Baldwin ("30 Rock"); Diablo Cody ("The United States of Tara"); Greg Daniels and Rainn Wilson ("The Office"), to Larry David ("Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Seinfeld")and Garry Shandling ("The Larry Sanders Show")...
What would we do without them? Sunday at 7pm

Then, there's the two ex-lovers who meet for lunch at their favorite haunt from years before. Will sparks reignite to rekinkle love or rage? Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman star in this funny, bittersweet drama adapted from Christopher Reid's captivating poem. Sex, temptation, guilt and revenge are all on the menu.
Sunday at 8pm

Photographing in Big Bend...

From landscape photography to performance theatre WESTERN PERSPECTIVE takes the audience on a journey to the creative side of West Texas. Learn more about what molds us into the unique characters, artists, and individual personalities who make up our wide and open spaces. As West Texas widens its creative boundaries we can only hope you will too...8pm

First go the monkeys, then go the camera people...

The most powerful raptor in the world, harpy eagles are barely ever seen, let alone filmed. In this extraordinary documentary, NATURE steps into the world of this monkey-eating eagle, risking injury to obtain intimate pictures of them bringing back large monkeys to the nest. But then, what do you know...one of these massive birds starts following the team...NATURE...7pm


Time. We waste it, save it, kill it, make it. The world runs on it. Yet, ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: They have no idea. Even more surprising, the deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be nothing more than an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong? In search of answers, Brian Greene takes us on the ultimate time traveling adventure. You'll never look at your wristwatch the same way again...The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time...8pm

Behind the lines with FRONTLINE...

Secrets of the Dead: Japanese SuperSub investigates the startling story of Japan's creation of a tech masterpiece-an aircraft carrier submarine that could blow up the Panama Canal and attack the U.S. How close did Japan's secret sub come, and how did we stop it? Find out tonight at 7pm

As dictators are toppling like dominoes, FRONTLINE offers a rare look from inside war ravaged Syria...we travel with undercover reporter Ramita Navai into some of the most dangerous areas to meet members of the opposition movement forced into hiding. Navai experiences first-hand life as a fugitive when she is trapped in a safe house with three opposition coordinators on the government's most wanted list...reality TV at it's "realest"...9pm

Well...nobody's perfect...

The last line in the movie "Some Like it Hot" speaks for a generation with the exception, of course, of Marilyn Monroe...Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and now Antiques Roadshow appraises her dress from the film...valued upwards of a quarter of a million dollars...tonight at 7 & 7:30pm.

Part One of "Looking for Lincoln" explores how Abraham Lincoln the man was transformed into Abraham Lincoln the legend...8pm

If you missed it Sunday night, here's your chance to record some really intelligent television...it's Masterpiece Contemporary's "Page Eight", a contemporary spy thriller starring Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener). Written and directed by Sir David Hare (Oscar-nominated adapter of The Reader and The Hours)...1am

Some say his ideas are a revolution in education...

Damen Lopez changed his school from a career-ender to the model facility in California in just seven years. During his tenure the school, the largest in the district, became an excellent model that performed within the top ten percent of all schools within the state of California. How did he do it? Damen’s model affects nearly 60,000 students in 18 states. Tonight he sits Face to Face with Ellen Robertson Green in the KACV studios tells how he does it, and how we all play a part in helping children, especially those living in poverty, be successful...8pm

Are we complex enough to appreciate the simple?

Amazing night for television... physicist and author Brian Greene reveals "space" as a dynamic fabric that can stretch, twist, warp and ripple under the influence of gravity...definitely not the empty void we tend to believe. Nova does what only Nova can do in the premiere of "Fabric of the Cosmos: What is Space"...8pm

After the passing of Steve Jobs, PBS has produced a doc which takes an in-depth look at the genius who put life changing technology in the palm of our hands...
ONE LAST THING (a tribute to his lecture style) tonight at 9pm

And the winner is...

The 50-year anniversary of the atomic bomb provides the perfect opportunity share a very chilling story with the world. Beginning in the 1950s, American and Soviet scientists engaged in a dangerous race to see who could build and detonate the world's largest bomb. The story of the race has never been fully told.
Tonight on Secrets of the Dead...7pm