Crash of Flight 111 (February 17; 8 to 9 p.m.; Channel 13) concludes from a wealth of evidence gathered over the course of a four-year, $39 million investigation that a chain of accidents caused the crash of the Swissair flight just short of Halifax, Nova Scotia—accidents that are waiting to happen in many other planes.
Until the Violence Stops (February 17; 10 to 11 p.m.; Lifetime) visits five communities, from Harlem to South Dakota to the Philippines and Kenya, where fund-raisers for programs to end violence against women were organized around star-studded performances of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. With Glenn Close, Rosario Dawson, Salma Hayek, Queen Latifah, and many others.
A Place of Our Own (February 17; 10 to 11 p.m.; Channel 13) is Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, where filmmaker Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till) spent summers growing up among other affluent African-American families who wanted a refuge from racism and a slice of the beach. Also reminiscing are Henry Louis Gates, Lani Guinier, and Manny Marable.
Horns and Halos (February 18; 7 to 8:30 p.m.; Cinemax) is the paired stories of J. H. Hatfield—who wrote a tell-all clip job about George W. Bush that was suppressed by its own publisher when a reporter found out that Hatfield had done time for attempted murder—and Sander Hicks, a 33-year-old Lower East Side troublemaker who got sued himself when his Soft Skull Press went ahead and republished Hatfield’s book. A frantic and wholly absorbing documentary that ends with sudden death.
Raising Waylon (February 22; 9 to 11 p.m.; CBS) asks Thomas Gibson and Poppy Montgomery to grow up overnight when they inherit a 9-year-old boy whose godparents they had agreed to be back when they were a couple. Now, restaurateur Thomas dates models, photographer Poppy dates rock-and-roll musicians, neither is ever up for breakfast, and all this—even great-aunt Doris Roberts—would be intolerable if not for actors as friendly as dolphins.
The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt (February 23; 6:30 to 7:45 p.m.; Cinemax) remembers the candidate for president of Colombia on the second anniversary of her abduction by drug-dealing leftist guerrillas even as she campaigned against political corruption financed by narco-trafficking cartels. She’s still alive, somewhere in the jungle, and Colombia is still at civil war with itself, as if the late Pablo Escobar were pulling the strings from hell, and after you watch this infuriating documentary, read Gabriel García Márquez’s despairing nonfiction, News of a Kidnapping.