As the title character of “Magnum, P.I.,” Tom Selleck used to spend as much time flirting with the camera as tracking down bad guys.
It’s a different story for Selleck nowadays as the hero of the “Jesse Stone” movies.
In his tiny, narrow-minded town of Paradise, Mass., Police Chief Stone spends a lot of his time bored, brooding and subsisting on a diet of coffee and Scotch whisky. He also does a pretty good job of solving the unlikely crimes that crop up in this isolated corner of the world. But there’s not much job satisfaction. Or job security.
After two years, Selleck is back for the fifth installment of his CBS movie franchise. “Jesse Stone: Thin Ice” airs Sunday.
In this tale, Stone gets in hot water with the town council when he becomes involved in a shoot-out on a Boston street — far from where he’s paid to maintain order.
He further defies the council by taking on the case of an out-of-towner who shows up in search of her missing child.
“You can fire me,” Stone tells a councilman. “But you can’t tell me what to do.”
Other shows to look out for.
“Kitchen Impossible” isn’t the title of a show about people who can’t cook. It’s a new series on DIY Network that cooks up solutions for transforming the kitchen into a more livable, productive and beautiful place. Host Marc Bartolomeo, a longtime carpenter and electrician, offers recipes for renovation projects that range from installing tile to removing a wall to increasing the kitchen’s working area. Wednesday’s premiere episode helps homeowners install a back- splash, build a countertop and open up the entire space by removing a load-bearing wall.
The broadcast conclusion to “Planet Forward” doesn’t air on PBS until April 15. But in the weeks leading up to this finale, the “Planet Forward” initiative is rejecting the top-down, experts-dominated model for public-affairs programming in favor of a bottom-up approach where citizens lead the conversation. With that in mind, “Planet Forward” will debut online Friday as a virtual town square, hosted by Emmy-winning journalist Frank Sesno.
The subject: energy and climate change — and how these challenges can best be met. Students, innovators, activists, policymakers and the online community as a whole are welcome to take part.
Submission of text and photo essays, songs, film and animation is invited through the “Planet Forward” website. Some of the best submissions will be part of the televised special, which is planned as the first of a two-year series of programs.
