Tnt

Corporations have all the power, all the money, Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) tells a weeping mother at the end of the pilot for a series premiering Sunday night on TNT. "We provide [pause] leverage." So begins Leverage, a Mission Impossible-type series of a band of merry pranksters - hackers, grifters, escape artists and thieves - assembled to right the wrongs of society with high-tech tools. There is nothing new or exciting about the team, which is mainly done as caricature. There's the immature computer hacker who drinks orange soda, the femme fatale who seduces men into deals they shouldn't make, and an escape artist who is blond and lithe and seems to have studied every one of Uma Thurman's moves.

Whatever you thought of the original "Dallas"  on CBS, you have to admit it spoke to its times like few other pop culture artifacts of the 1980s. In the Reagan era with its celebration of McMansions, corporations and de-regulated savings & loan presidents who got rich by stealing from their elderly clients, why wouldn't J.R. Ewing become the most popular character in prime time drama? Was any character more an embodiment of 1980's values? But why in the world would anyone think it was a good idea to revisit that turf again in 2012, simply repeating the same conflicts, themes and values almost note for note as they were first sounded some 34 years ago?

For TNT, this weekend's NFL season opener brings on changes, all of the bigger and hopefully better variety.The Turner network has strengthened its hand, what with the addition of Verne Lundquist to the booth as play-by-play announcer and Ernie Johnson as host for its nine-game package, which kicks off with the Buffalo-Denver contest Sunday at 8 p.m.During the game, TNT has followed Fox in placing the game clock and score in a corner of the screen during...

Our list of everything going on the week of 11/28-12/4 NOTABLE TV MONDAY Basketball Wives LA: Reunion, Part 2 (special; 8 p.m.; VH1) Top 40 (special; 8 p.m.; BBC America) Bored to Death (season finale; 9 p.m.; HBO) The Closer (mid-season premiere; 9 p.m.; TNT) Next Great Baker (season premiere; 9 p.m.; TLC) Rizzoli & Isles (mid-season premiere; 10 p.m.; TNT) Scouted (series debut; 10 p.m.; E!) TUESDAY America's Supernanny (series debut; 9 p.m.; Lifetime)

With the Olympic flame about to be extinguished in Nagano, Japan, it's time for "Media Watch" to hand out its medals for coverage in and around the Games.Will the winners please step to the podium?GoldJim Lampley: The TNT anchor had more Olympic experience than anyone else and it showed, as he skillfully moved the action along at a dreadful time of day no less.Jim Huber: Turned in one brilliant essay after another for TNT. The best at his craft in the business.TNT's overall coverage: Executive producer Mike Pearl and his crew put together a beautiful package with what was essentially table scraps just about every day.Verne Lundquist: Equipped himself wonderfully as CBS' lead voice on figure skating, the highest profile event of the Games.

Tonight, TNT devotes its late-evening programming to Dorothy Stratten, the one-time Playboy playmate whose fate made for one of the more tragic stories of the early 1980s."

If getting through the Sunday bloat of NFL football and the relentless public relations machinery that goes with it is a chore, it's good to know that, at least for half a season, there's TNT, whose Sunday night package provides all the detail of the other NFL carriers, but with an insouciance and charm that no one else delivers.From this perspective, Sunday's Baltimore-Indianapolis game, seen locally on TNT and Channel 54, was easily the best presentation of a Ravens contest seen so far this year.

Besides 45 minutes worth of an episode of "ER," what exactly does $10 million get you these days on television?That's what officials at Turner Sports, who forked over that amount to CBS for a piece of the Winter Olympic Games, will find out starting tomorrow, when TNT commences at least 50 hours of coverage from Nagano, Japan.In television parlance, $10 million really isn't all that much, particularly weighed against the $375 million CBS paid for all the rights to the Games. Because of that, and CBS' desire to keep and air all the good stuff, TNT's offerings will be relatively limited.

The TV Repairman:Something that might get lost in the clarinets and bass drums heralding the Winter Olympics on CBS beginning Feb. 12 is the fact that TNT will be there with its excellent midweek afternoon coverage, too.Anyone who checked out the cable's work two years ago in France knows these guys can do more with less then their big brothers and they don't spend all day telling you about it."Actually, we're hoping to have the same success we had in Albertville," says coordinating producer Mike Klatt, "and the chances of that are good because the situation now is better than it was in 1992."

More than most, Turner executive producer Mike Pearl should have a pretty good feel for what goes into a successful Winter Olympics telecast, as he was a producer for ABC in 1984 and 1988, and the coordinating producer of CBS's efforts in 1992 and 1994.For TNT's presentation, Pearl has a lot less air time to work with than he did with the network, a significant number of restrictions over what he can show and when he can show it and a whopping 14-hour time difference between Nagano and the eastern United States.

After more than 20 years in TV and feature films, Baltimore native Jada Pinkett Smith could hardly be blamed if she wanted to slow down and ease back a bit. It seems as if the Baltimore School for the Arts graduate has been working nonstop on the national stage since her breakthrough TV debut in 1991 as a member of the cast of Bill Cosby's hit NBC series, "A Different World. " But at 39, the wife of actor Will Smith and mother of two children — who are already launched on their own show-biz careers — sounds like she is pushing herself harder than ever.

King's response 8:30 p.m. [TNT] Now that the Orlando Magic has humbled LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, what will King James' response be in Game 2? Apparently 49 points weren't enough in Game 1.

1 More Madness (Part 1): The early NCAA game (7 p.m, chs. 13, 9) is Xavier-Pittsburgh. Xavier is the best school with the nickname Musketeers. 2 More Madness (Part 2): The late game (same channels) is Villanova-Duke. 'Nova means "it doesn't go" in Spanish - bad for selling a car but no issue for the Wildcats. 3 Check with Cuz: During the Suns-Trail Blazers game (10:30 p.m., TNT), TNT could interview Portland's Brandon Roy about his cousin Patrick losing the NHL wins record. 4 Not in the Army: So you're not playing in the tournament today (3 p.m., Golf Channel)

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story is a made-for-TV movie that seems tailor-made for the times in which we live. With its core story of a poor boy overcoming tremendous obstacles to become a transformative figure in his profession and the world, the biography, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as the world-famous Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, should be perfectly in sync with the Barack Obama zeitgeist. More than at any time since the Age of Anxiety in the 1950s, Americans seem eager for stories of individual achievement, and this one's one of the best anyone could imagine.

TNT is using its hit The Closer to serve as lead-in tonight to the premiere of Trust Me, a new series starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh. Trust me, there is almost nothing in this drama that works. The series is set in an ad agency with McCormack and Cavanaugh playing two best friends since childhood who now work together thinking up ads for products like cell phones. In the opening scenes, the two are shown mid-day stretched out at a pool, recovering from hangovers. They lie shamelessly about how hard they are working when the boss calls.

1 NBA, Part 1: Some Christmas Magic. Playing against some Christmas Hornets (noon, ESPN). 2 NBA, Part 2: In the Spurs-Suns game (2:30 p.m., chs. 2, 7), Steve Nash might sit out to rest for Boxing Day tomorrow (being that he's Canadian). 3 NBA, Part 3: This is the marquee matchup, Celtics-Lakers (5 p.m., chs. 2, 7), so why did the NBA schedule it during dinner time? 4 NBA, Part 4 : Just in case you didn't eat yet, here's the Christmas turkey: Wizards at Cavaliers (8 p.m., TNT)

How do you hype the return of Magic Johnson to the NBA while keeping the expectations to a respectable level?That's the pleasant little quandary facing the Turner NBA telecast team, which has been handed a dream meeting tonight (TNT, 10:30) between Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls and the omnipresent Michael Jordan, which should break all regular-season ratings records.But Johnson, who made a triumphant comeback Tuesday night against Golden State, is, after all, 36 years old, and 4 1/2 years removed from his last NBA season, not to mention a carrier of the AIDS virus.

There's good news and bad news this weekend for former NBA guard Glenn "Doc" Rivers.The bad news is that Rivers, who spent 13 seasons with Atlanta, the Los Angeles Clippers, New York and San Antonio, was not named as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players, but then, neither were you.The good news is that Rivers, 35, will get to talk about some of those 50 in his new role as game analyst for TNT's coverage of the greatest sport known to man.Rivers will work...

Corporations have all the power, all the money, Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) tells a weeping mother at the end of the pilot for a series premiering Sunday night on TNT. "We provide [pause] leverage." So begins Leverage, a Mission Impossible-type series of a band of merry pranksters - hackers, grifters, escape artists and thieves - assembled to right the wrongs of society with high-tech tools. There is nothing new or exciting about the team, which is mainly done as caricature. There's the immature computer hacker who drinks orange soda, the femme fatale who seduces men into deals they shouldn't make, and an escape artist who is blond and lithe and seems to have studied every one of Uma Thurman's moves.