NAMATH

HBO, 9 p.m. ET

Subtitled Beaver Falls to Broadway, this biography stresses the person as much as the athlete, and spends a lot of time, at the program’s beginning and end, revisiting and discussing the small Pennsylvania mining town from which Joe Willie Namath emerged. But it also covers his days as a star quarterback at the University of Alabama, his tabloid New York playboy lifestyle, his two periods of alcoholism, his Hollywood film career and more – all orbiting around his guaranteed win at Super Bowl III. This HBO Sports documentary is a very good study: thorough and compassionate, yet unflinching and honest.

BROKEDOWN PALACE

Sundance, 9:05 p.m. ET

This 1999 movie is about two teenage girls arrested in Thailand and charged with heroin smuggling. What makes it noteworthy, 13 years later, is not only the tautness of its fact-based drama, but also the performances, and identities, of the leading ladies. Claire Danes plays one, Kake Beckinsale the other.

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?

ABC Family, 10 p.m. ET

This 2000 movie may be my favorite Coen Brothers film, and that’s high praise indeed. The sheer audacity of its concept is dizzying: loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, centered on a soundtrack of backwoods country songs, and borrowing its title from the name of an unproduced screenplay mentioned in the satirical film Sullivan’s Travels. Yet it all works, deliriously well, thanks to George Clooney’s charismatically cartoonish star turn as a convict on the lam.

AN IDIOT ABROAD 2: THE BUCKET LIST

Science Channel, 10 p.m. ET

In this week’s installment, the season’s second, poor Karl Pilkington is crammed aboard the Trans-Siberian railroad, strapped into a Soviet-era G-force centrifuge, and, left to choose his own itinerary for once, visits a dwarf village he’d heard about in China. Tight quarters all around – and entertainment all around, as well. For my TV WORTH WATCHING interview with Karl Pilkington, and a preview of the new season of Idiot Abroad, read BIANCULLI’S BLOG HERE.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

NBC, 11:29 p.m. ET

This repeat proves Thomas Wolfe wrong, by proving that Jimmy Fallon, at least, can go home again – as he hosts SNL for the first time stepping down as one of the show’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players. In one sketch, he gazes wistfully at his own reflection – with current cast member Andy Samberg “mirroring” his every move. Well, most of them. And wait until “Weekend Update”…