Blue Ridge PBS - Featured Programs

Join us for these featured programs

	American Experience: Earth Days
	Great Performances - "Renee Fleming & Dmitri Hvorostovsky: A Musical Odyssey in St. Petersburg"
	Great Performances: Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2010
	History Detectives

	Lawrence Welk Show
	Masterpiece Mystery!
	Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami
	Nature
	Through a Dog's Eyes

American Experience: Earth Days

Thursday, August 26 at 9:00pm
Television's most-watched history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE has been hailed as "peerless" (Wall Street Journal), "the most consistently enriching program on television" (Chicago Tribune) and "a beacon of intelligence and purpose" (Houston Chronicle). On air and online, the series brings to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America's past and present. Acclaimed by viewers and critics alike, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentaries have been honored with every major broadcast award, including 24 Emmy Awards, four duPont-Columbia Awards and 14 George Foster Peabody
Awards.

On "Earth Days," director Robert Stone ("Oswald's Ghost," "Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst") traces the origins of the modern environmental movement. The story is shared through the eyes of nine Americans who propelled the movement from its beginnings in the 1950s to its moment of triumph in 1970 with the original Earth Day and to its status as a major political force in America.

Visit the companion website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ .

Great Performances - "Renee Fleming & Dmitri Hvorostovsky: A Musical Odyssey in St. Petersburg"

Wednesday, September 1 at 8:00pm
Reigning American soprano Renee Fleming travels to Russia for a special visit to St. Petersburg with her friend and frequent co-star, Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovky. There, in the "Venice of the North," they explore and perform in some of the most spectacular locations of a city that was born in the remarkable mind and imagination of the young Czar Peter the Great (a city that he named not for himself, but for Saint Peter).

St. Petersburg is a city of palaces, and Fleming and Hvorostovsky take in three of the most memorable, all of them on the water. First is the Winter Palace, also known as the Hermitage, built with one entire facade facing the Neva River. Next on the tour is the Yusupov Palace (the scene of Rasputin's murder); and lastly, the Peterhof with its fantastic fountains on the Gulf of Finland. In each location, they sing arias and duets by Verdi and Tchaikovsky, as well as the Russian songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

Visit the Great Performances website at www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/

Great Performances: Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2010

Wednesday, August 25 at 8:00pm
The renowned Vienna Philharmonic continues its summertime tradition with another open-air concert held in the magnificent gardens of Austria's Imperial Schonbrunn Palace. Guest conductor Franz Welser-Most (currently music director of the Cleveland Orchestra) will lead the Vienna Philharmonic in an atmospheric selection of audience favorites.

Visit the Great Performances website at www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/

History Detectives

Mondays at 9:00pm
America's top gumshoes are back to prove once again that an object found in an attic or backyard might be anything but ordinary. Wesley Cowan, independent appraiser and auctioneer; Gwendolyn Wright, historian and professor of architecture, Columbia University; Elyse Luray, independent appraiser and expert in art history; Dr. Eduardo Pagan, professor of history and American studies at Arizona State University; and Tukufu Zuberi, professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania leave no stone unturned as they travel around the country to explore the stories behind local folklore, prominent figures and family legends.

Visit the History Detectives Facebook Fan Page at and the companion website at pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/

Lawrence Welk Show

Saturdays at 7:00pm

August 28 - "Country & Western"
Howdy, partners! Grab your honey and get ready to square dance to the "Orange Blossom Special". Neil Levang and Buddy Merrill shine on "San Antonio Rose", Larry Hooper is our "Auctioneer", and Bob Lido puts his very own original stamp on "Ragtime Cowboy Joe". Feel free to dance to the "Tennessee Waltz" or sing along with Joe Feeney and the gang on "Goodnight Irene."
September, 4 - "Salute to the U.S.A."
This historic show from 1971 was the very first syndicated show on the newly formed Lawrence Welk Network. The show starts with a rousing "Thank You Very Much" to our loyal audience and sponsors and ends with a reverent "America The Beautiful". Along the way Ralna sings "Tennessee Waltz," Norma and Jimmy can be found in "Beautiful Ohio," and Myron, Bobby & Cissy get together for the "Pennsylvania Polka". You'll want to travel along with the musical family as they salute our great country.

Masterpiece Mystery!

Sundays at 9:00pm
For more than 35 years, MASTERPIECE has enthralled audiences with the works of the finest classic and contemporary writers interpreted by the world's foremost actors.

August 29-"Inspector Lewis, Series III: Counterculture Blues"
On a routine disturbance call, Lewis (Kevin Whately) is shocked to encounter a rock star (Joanna Lumley) believed to have died years before.
September 5 - "Inspector Lewis: The Dead of Winter"
The discovery of a body on an Oxford bus leads Lewis and Hathaway to a sprawling Oxford estate where Hathaway spent much of his childhood. Guest stars include Nathaniel Parker ("The Inspector Lynley Mysteries") as a house guest with suspiciously close ties to the estate owner's wife.

Visit the Masterpiece website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/

Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami

Monday, August 30 at 10:00pm
MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI explores the critical role that Miami played in the evolution of one of the most significant cultural figures of our time: Muhammad Ali (ne Cassius Clay). The film chronicles Cassius Clay's arrival in Miami in the fall of 1960 (fresh from earning a gold medal in the Rome Olympics), his life in Overtown - a neighborhood that was considered "Harlem South" and a vibrant center of black entertainment and commerce - and his affiliation with the famed Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach.

Over the course of the next few years - coinciding with the height of the national civil rights movement - Clay evolved both professionally and politically, piling up victories in the ring and adopting the black separatist teachings of the Nation of Islam. As MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI makes clear, it was in this period that Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.

Visit the companion website at www.pbs.org/muhammadali/

Nature

Sundays & Thursdays at 8:00pm
For more than 25 years, NATURE has been the benchmark of natural history programs on television, capturing the splendors of the natural world, from the African plains to the Antarctic ice. The series has won nearly 450 honors from the television industry, parent groups, the international wildlife film community and environmental organizations, including 10 Emmys, three Peabodys and the first award given to a television program by the Sierra Club.

August 22 & 26-"Rhinoceros"
They are hulking beasts from prehistory, virtually unchanged over 25 million years. Once they roamed the Earth in millions, numbering hundreds of species of all shapes and sizes; today, the rhinoceros is one of the planet's rarest animals, with three of the remaining five species on the brink of extinction. NATURE trails rangers through the savannahs of South Africa, the grasslands of India and the jungles of Indonesia, and visits rhino fertility experts at an American zoo, detailing efforts to protect rhinos from poachers, relocate them to new habitats and breed them in captivity.
August 29 & September 2-"Superfish"
They slice through the water's surface with explosive power - sail, spear and a half-ton of muscle flashing in the sun. Their journeys through the open ocean are epic, their life cycle, bizarre. They are the billfish - marlin, sailfish, spearfish and swordfish - largest and most highly prized of all gamefish. Their astonishing story has never been fully told. Emmy award-winning filmmaker and biologist Rick Rosenthal brings to the screen a lifetime of experience with these astonishing sea creatures as he observes tiny billfish nurseries in the wild, dives deep into secret undersea canyons, films incredible color-changing behavior and embarks on a quest for an elusive thousand-pound "grander."
September 6 & 9 "Drakensburg: Barrier of Spears"
The Drakensberg Mountains are southern Africa's Alps, rising more than 11,000 feet into the sky. Beneath their shimmering beauty lies an incredibly hostile environment for the surprising number of creatures that manage to live there.

Visit the NATURE website at www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/

Through a Dog's Eyes

Wednesday, September 8 at 8:00pm
Each year, hundreds of people find hope through a handful of organizations across the country that train service dogs for people with disabilities. THROUGH A DOG'S EYES follows the journey of recipients as they go through the heartwarming and sometimes difficult process of receiving and becoming acclimated to a service dog. Jennifer Arnold, founder of one of the nation's largest service dog organizations, Canine Assistants, details her unique teaching methods, giving viewers an intimate look at the canine-recipient matching process. The program offers inspiring, hopeful stories that show how dogs can affect everyone's life and how with a little patience and a lot of love, an "ordinary" dog can show how extraordinary he or she can become.

For more program information visit our Programs A-Z page
and see clips from your favorite PBS programs.

The Blue Ridge PBS Primetime Calendar and daytime schedules are available as an Adobe PDF File.
Click below on the calendar of your choice.

September Primetime September Daytime

Late-Breaking World News and Events May Result in Schedule Changes

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