Today, Frontline presents ”The Quake” at 9pm:

FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith and team arrived in Port-au-Prince within days, and in this powerful report, bears witness to the disaster and the ill-coordinated relief efforts in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Drawing on interviews with key officials and humanitarian experts from Port-au-Prince to New York, The Quake asks, can the world do better? And how?

If you can stomach it, Nova at 8pm is all about rats:

Every 48 years, the inhabitants of the remote Indian state of Mizoram suffer a horrendous ordeal known locally as mautam. An indigenous species of bamboo, blanketing 30 percent of Mizoram’s 8,100 square miles, blooms once every half-century, spurring an explosion in the rat population which feeds off the bamboo’s fruit. The rats run amok, destroying crops and precipitating a crippling famine throughout Mizoram. NOVA follows this gripping tale of nature’s capacity to engender human suffering, and investigates the botanical mystery of why the bamboo flowers with clockwork precision every half century.

Tomorrow at 9pm we air The Street Stops Here, a documenatry about legendary high school basketball coach Bob Hurley and his school, St. Anthony in Jersey City.  Hurley not only wins a lot of games and championships, plays a big role in changing the lives of his players – all but 2 of the hundreds of kids he’s coached have gone on to college.  I’ve seen this film in its entirety, and it’s awesome.

After that at 1030pm American Masters follows architect I.M.Pei as he returns to China to design a modern museum.

And, on Thursday at 9pm, a four part series called Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery kicks off.  The first episode is about the brain.  I’ve seen this episode, and it is very graphic, but I got over that in the first 10 minutes and was fascinated for the rest of the hour.  Again, if you can handle watching surgeons cut up someone’s brain, check it out.  It’s not all cutting, it’s also (as the title suggests) the history of how these surgeries came into being.  Very interesting.

At 10pm, we start re-running the series Make Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America.  The first episode examines “Nerds, Jerks ,and Odballs”, with the likes of Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, Andy Kaufman, Woody, Allen, Cheech and Chong… and so many more.

On Prime, Nova and Nature both tell interesting stories about primates.  At 7pm, Nova goes the Congo to visit a little-studied group of apes called bonobos, which  closely resemble humans:

Deep in the Congo lives a little-studied group of apes called the bonobos. Like chimpanzees, bonobos are among humans’ closest relatives. But unlike chimps, known for their violent behavior, bonobos are far more peaceful, even matriarchal. They embrace their neighbors and resolve conflict in an usual way — by having sex. Much like humans, bonobos have sex not just to procreate, but also for pleasure. The discovery of these more gentle ape traits have fascinated scientists and led them to question our origins and the roots of human nature as a whole. But in 1997, just as research on these elusive apes was getting off the ground, civil war broke out in the Congo. Bonobo researchers were forced to evacuate immediately, leaving behind the astonishing apes they were studying. Now, years later, NOVA returns to the Congo with veteran bonobo researchers who are worried that war and the bush meat industry may have decimated the bonobo population. What they find gives them hope for the future of the species. The program tells the intimate, emotional story of these amazing apes, detailing their survival, and the experiences of the scientists who have followed them so closely for so long.

And, on Nature:

In a wildlife story with Shakespearian overtones, life becomes very dangerous for twin baboons in Zimbabwe when their father is defeated as alpha male of the troop by the dominant ruler of a neighboring troop, throwing the social order into turmoil and unleashing potentially deadly intrigue.

And, at 9pm on Prime, we shift gears with The Power of Harmony, a documentary about a gay men’s chorus that formed in the heart of the Bible-belt.

The bets were huge and risky — billions of dollars on the housing market. The upside was undeniable — superbanks reaped billions of dollars, dominated the landscape and gobbled up competitors. Then the bottom dropped out — the massive losses on Wall Street nearly broke the banks. In the worst crisis in decades, brand name banks are on the brink of failure. Now as the federal government contemplates what could become a massive nationalization of the industry, Frontline goes behind closed doors to tell the inside story of how things went so wrong so fast and to document efforts to stabilize the industry. Veteran Frontline producer Michael Kirk (“Inside the Meltdown”) untangles the complicated financial and political web threatening one particular superbank — Bank of America.

And, at 10pm, Independent Lens features a film that examines the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the U.S. military by telling the personal stories of gay Americans who serve.

On tonight’s episode, a woman learns about the history of a camera inherited from her uncle who survived the Holocaust.  Her family tells two conflicting stories about the uncle – in one he survives persecution with the help of his gentile girlfriend, and in the other, he takes pictures with the camera for the Nazi’s.  Also, a confusing letter from 1942 leads to an examination of the history of  Alcoholics Anonymous.

At 8pm, Simon Schama’s Power of Art delves into the life of Caravaggio.

At 9pm, the first in a series called Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?  Here is the series description:

UNNATURAL CAUSES is a four-hour series that, for the first time on television, sounds the alarm about glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their causes. he series looks at what’s making us sick in the first place, investigating startling new findings that suggest there is much more to poor health than bad habits, inadequate health care or unlucky genes. The series circles in on a slow killer in plain view: the social circumstances in which we are born, live and work that can affect our risk for disease as surely as germs and viruses.

Tonight, on wttwHD: After Antiques Roadshow at 8 pm, we air an American Experience about Roberto Clemente:

Baseball great Roberto Clemente’s talent and inimitable style drew legions of fans, but as this production reveals, he was more than an exceptional baseball player. He was also a committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination and worked for social justice.

On wttwPrime this evening, some interesting stuff:  At 7pm, the Nova presents “The Family that Walks on All Fours”, which is really fascinating:

An intense scientific debate has ignited around a quiet but extraordinary family living in rural Turkey — a family with five adults who walk on all fours. Since bipedality has long been considered one of the defining characteristics of modern humans, such a discovery raises fascinating questions about genetics, society and the evolutionary history of our species. Is this the anthropological find of the millennium or simply a unique medical case? In this moving documentary, NOVA sets out to unravel the controversy and meet the individuals who have captured the imagination of scientists around the world.

At 8pm, Nature chronicles “The Adventures of the Ultimate Spider-Hunter”:

Mild-mannered water treatment engineer by day, tarantula obsessive and arachnid guru by night, Martin Nicholas is the real Spiderman. And he’s out to find the most amazing spiders in the world. Featured in NATURE’s “Deep Jungle,” Nicholas travels the world in pursuit of exotic spiders, including the goliath bird-eater of Venezuela and a small South American spider that creates the biggest web in the world – up to 30 feet long

The return of WTTW’s award-winning documentary spanning the fascinating history of Chicago’s vast and diverse LGBT community. Narrated by actress and Chicago native Jane Lynch. OUT & PROUD IN CHICAGO recently won a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists for Best Public Affairs Programming. It also finished 3rd in an international competition, The Hugo Television Awards sponsored by the Chicago International Film Festival. Tune in for this special rebroadcast!

Frontline  investigates the causes of the worst economic crisis in 70 years and how the government responded. The film chronicles the inside stories of the Bear Stearns deal, Lehman Brothers collapse, the propping up of insurance giant AIG and the $700 billion bailout. “Inside the Meltdown” examines what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t see, couldn’t stop and haven’t been able to fix.

Then at 10pm, another powerful documentary airs on Independent Lens.  In “Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors”, the story of this remarkable event (also chronicled by a book and then movie called “Alive”) is told by the people who experienced it.  The men survived for 72 days after their plane crashed in the Andean Cordillera in October 1972. 

The film is a moving tale of survival and humanity.  Very honest.  Catch it if you can.

The show repeats Wednesdays at 9am and Saturdays at 3pm.

Here’s a website for the PBS airings of Monty Python.

On wttwPrime, you can see Globe Trekker at 9pm.

And watch it.

Immediately following Independent Lens, we’ll air a Tavis Smiley special with discussion about the film.

Between this movie and just finishing The Wire, I am very discouraged about violence in our country.  We have to do something about this.