Golden Globes, Hallmark’s Winterfest, Newsmakers on ’60 Minutes’

2019 Golden Globe Awards - Season 76
NBC

A selective critical checklist of notable weekend TV:

The 76th Annual Golden Globes (Sunday, 8/7c, NBC): Over her illustrious career, Carol Burnett has amassed five Golden Globe wins — and six Emmys (but who’s counting?). As the year’s awards season kicks off, Burnett becomes the first recipient of a TV life achievement award, named in her honor. (The Cecil B. DeMille Award, for achievement in film, goes to Jeff Bridges.) While you might wonder what took them so long, it’s an acknowledgement that TV is at least as prestigious as movies these days. And with Killing Eve nominee Sandra Oh and Brooklyn Nine-Nine winner Andy Samberg hosting the festivities at the Beverly Hilton, the TV nominees are notable for how many first-year shows are in the mix. (Here are my thoughts on who might and should win.)

Winter Castle (Saturday, 8/7c, Hallmark): Christmas is now a distant memory, so the channel that embraces schmaltz in any season turns to the annual “Winterfest” with warmhearted movies to chase away the cold every Saturday in January. First up: the story of Jenny (Emilie Ullerup), who falls for Craig (Kevin McGarry), the best man in her sister’s impending nuptials at an ice hotel. Expect much melting (of hearts, anyway) before it’s all over.

60 Minutes (Sunday, 7/6c, CBS): The hard-hitting newsmagazine returns for the new year with a report it’s billing as “the interview the Egyptian government does not want you to see.” The subject: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who talks with Scott Pelley about how his military is working with Israel against terrorists in North Sinai. But Pelley’s tough questions about El-Sisi’s authoritarian tactics at home obviously rankled, because 60 Minutes reports that the Egyptian ambassador reached out to say the interview could no longer be aired. Thankfully, freedom of the not-fake-news press wins out.

In another segment, Anderson Cooper interviews outspoken New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 is the youngest woman even elected to the U.S. Congress.

Family Guy (Sunday, 9/8c, Fox): In a satire of the news biz, Peter (Seth MacFarlane) becomes a fake-news contributor to a local Quahog station after his hair turns white — read: distinguished — and his antics capture the attention of a prominent politician. To be continued…

Inside Weekend TV: I’m hooked on Top Chef this year, but I get almost as big a kick out of Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America (Sunday, 9/8c), back for a new season of kitchen mishaps worthy of Nailed It!… With only one more episode to go, Bravo’s addictive Dirty John (10/9c, Sunday) shows us events from a new angle, John’s (Eric Bana) sociopathic point of view, which somehow makes things seem even scarier. As Debra (Connie Britton) prepares to take him to court, she realizes what a formidable and ruthless adversary he can be… Science Channel’s four-part series Houdini’s Last Secrets (Sunday, 10/9c) enlists the escape artist’s grand-nephew, a magician/daredevil and a stunt builder to explore the science and methods of Houdini’s greatest acts — starting with the infamous water torture cell escape… CBS’s Madam Secretary (Sunday, 10/9c) couldn’t be timelier as it concludes a two-part episode that left us with Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) heading to jail over her public opposition to a governor’s policy of separating migrant children from their undocumented parents.