Sister Helen (November 18; 7 to 8:30 p.m.; Cinemax) goes uptown to spend eighteen months in the South Bronx, where a 69-year-old Benedictine nun, who has had her own troubles with booze, the drug-related death of a husband, and the murder of a son, runs a treatment center for alcoholics and addicts that’s so tough-love it’s practically a dictatorship.
JFK: Investigation Reopened (November 19; 9 to 10 p.m.; Court TV), just in time for the 40th anniversary of the assassination, finds an undisclosed police- motorcade DictaBelt, submits it to digital audio analysis, and concludes that it may, perhaps, indicate the presence of a second gunman. Not so much forensic science as forensic wishful thinking.
Full-Court Miracle (November 21; 8 to 10 p.m.; Disney Channel) stars Richard T. Jones as Lamont Carr, a real-life basketball star at the University of Virginia whose life is on hold because of a bad knee when he is approached by Alex D. Linz and fast-talked into coaching a winless team of Jewish schoolboys. On the way to Hanukkah and the championship, we learn about Judah and the Maccabees.
Oklahoma! (November 22; 7 to 10 p.m.; Channel 13) is the very satisfying Trevor Nunn–Susan Stroman revival/rethinking, with actors who can actually dance, a more sympathetic Jud (Shuler Hensley), and young lovers—Hugh Jackman as Curly, Josefina Gabrielle as Laurey—who are as handsome as they are gifted. This filmed stage show also peers out periodically at its enthusiastic audience, to no appreciable point.
Eloise at Christmastime (November 22; 8 to 10 p.m.; ABC) brings back the agreeable Sofia Vassilieva, who played the lead in ABC’s earlier Eloise at the Plaza, along with Julie Andrews as her nanny, awaiting the arrival of her mother from Paris for Christmas. She will, of course, save Rachel (Sarah Topham) from marrying the wrong man, while Debra Monk, Jeffrey Tambor, Gavin Creel, and Christine Baranski are variously foiled, astonished, or amused.
Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns (November 23; 8 to 9 p.m.; Channel 13), a wonderfully absorbing sequel to wildlife filmmaker Ginger Kathren’s Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies, continues the story of the pure white colt and the wild-horse culture to which he belongs.
National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Reunion (November 23; 8 to 10 p.m.; TBS), with Bryan Cranston as an aging Idaho hippie, Penelope Ann Miller as his loving mate, and Judge Reinhold as the uptight anesthesiologist who has left Hollywood for Thanksgiving in the sticks, is a whole lot broader than it is deep, and should send you directly to Pieces of April instead.
A Time to Remember (November 23; 8 to 10 p.m.; Hallmark Channel) teams up the formidable likes of Doris Roberts and Dana Delany as the Wasp matriarch and her rebellious artist-daughter who must rethink family in the pitiless light of Alzheimer’s, which is portrayed here with fierce accuracy and abiding grace.