Movie Spotlight

Director Penelope Spheeris brought equal amounts of sophistication and affection to The Beverly Hillbillies (FOX Tuesday at 8 p.m.), her smart, fresh 1993 spin on the 1962-1971 TV series, while honoring the cornball humor of the original. Hillbilly billionaire Jed Clampett (Jim Varney) heads for the hills of Beverly with the hopes of making a lady out of his tomboy daughter Elly May (Erika Eleniak).

Dead Presidents (Showtime Wednesday at 8 p.m.), the Hughes Brothers’ tale of how the Vietnam War and American society affect a black Marine, remains accessible while confounding expectations. By focusing on just four or five years in the life of young Anthony Curtis, Dead Presidents echoes the experience of a generation of men whose lives were distorted by Vietnam. Featuring N’Bushe Wright.

Nostalgists may want to tape AMC’s Thursday Betty Grable triple feature: Down Argentine Way (10 a.m.), Pinup Girl (11:30 a.m.) and Springtime in the Rockies (1 p.m.). Grable modestly said of herself, “I can sing a little, dance a little, act a little, so I get by,” but these three pictures will show just how effectively she did “get by.”

No movie more influenced young American directors in the ‘70s than The Searchers (TNT Thursday at 8 p.m. and Friday at 9 a.m.), John Ford’s controversial masterpiece about adventurer-mercenary Ethan Edwards and his five-year search for the Comanches who killed the woman he silently loved, his brother’s wife, and kidnaped her daughters. Like Scar, the chief he pursues, Ethan is an eternal outsider doomed to wander forever between the winds, and his odyssey is a ruthless, passionate microcosm of America’s bloody frontier story. Many critics now regard “The Searchers” as the greatest of all Westerns (a few others consider it crudely racist). The cast includes John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood.

In that 1990 blockbuster Home Alone (NBC Friday at 8 p.m.) an 8-year-old (Macaulay Culkin) is left behind by his parents when they jet to Paris for Christmas. Left to his own devices, he pigs out on junk food and foils a pair of bumbling thieves (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern).

It’s a Wonderful Life (NBC Saturday at 8 p.m.), the finest of the holiday perennials, will seem different this year, with the passing of its star James Stewart, unforgettable as a hard-pressed small-town businessman who in a moment of despair wishes he had never been born.

Indiscreet (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.) teamed Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in this elegant 1958 romance directed by Stanley Donen from Norman Krasna’s play “Kind Sir.”