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Thursday, August 12
CELEBRITY BOXING 2 Long Island gigolo Joey Buttafuoco takes on former WWF spokesmodel Joannie “Chyna” Laurer , Oympic gold medalist Olga Korbut grapples with Who Wants To Marry A Multi-millionaire’s Darva Conger , Welcome Back, Kotter’s Horshack ( Ron Palillo ) suits up against Saved By The Bell’s Screech ( Dustin Diamond ), while 7-foot-7 NBA star Manute Bol challenges 375-pound NFL lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry to an arm wrassle. 8:30 pm on Fox
Friday, August 13
XXVIII SUMMER OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONIES Four hours of flag-waving from Athens concludes with a torch-lighting performance by a secret superstar. Yanni? Nana Mouskouri?? Telly Savalas??? No, it’s Icelandic nymph Björk in a flaming boat. 1 pm on CBC and Newsworld, repeated at 5 and 9:30 pm on Newsworld, 7 pm on CBC and 8 pm and 2:40 am on NBC
MAN VS BEAST 2 Fox thumbs its nose at the Olympics by pitting humans against animals in contests of strength and endurance. Where else can you see a U.S. decathelete compete against a Labrador retriever in the long jump? 9 pm on Fox
Saturday, August 14
FOOTBALLERS’ WIVES This glamorously trashy UK potboiler about the lives and loves of professional soccer players would be better scheduled Friday nights after midnight next to all the softcore porn instead of family-hour dinnertime. Sex, drugs, footie and Ian’s mum, Kathy, from Eastenders as the soap’s matriarch. 6 pm on Showcase
Sunday, August 15
BREAKFAST WITH THE ARTS: TOM JONES With Sunday’s Coronation Street ritual on hold for the Olympics (spoiler: Leanne Battersby returns!), anglophiles can get their Brit fix with this concert recorded before a knicker-tossing crowd in Cardiff. 8 am on A&E
WOODSTOCK: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (1970, dir Michael Wadleigh, w/ Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana) It may be the 35th anniversary of the upstate New York fest, but some words of advice still hold true: don’t take the brown acid, man. 8 pm on TVO
Monday, August 16
THE ARTIST’S LIFE A profile of Toronto’s most notorious scenester, Vazaleen impresario and underpants fancier Will Munro . 7:30 am on Bravo
Tuesday, August 17
MAN OF GREASE The owner of a Montreal greasy spoon returns to Athens in search of the ultimate, nay Olympian, souvlaki. 10:30 pm on Newsworld, repeated at 1:30 am
Wednesday, August 18
THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980, dir John Landis, w/ John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown and Aretha Franklin) BBC listeners recently voted its soundtrack the best of all time, beating out Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. 3 pm on MuchMoreMusic
