A made-for-TV New Year’s: From ‘Twilight Zone’ to James Bond, a rundown of the marathons
From the coverage of the big ball dropping above an overcrowded Times Square to the N.Y.E.L.A. celebration scheduled for Grand Park downtown, there are plenty of festive means to see off 2016.
But for all your end-of-year plans that may not involve forced toasts and funny hats, television has you covered with a variety of programming marathons to keep your spirits up. Below, a rundown of some ways to wait out — or avoid entirely — the start of any party plans you may have to greet 2017.
MTV’s “Decade-a-thon”
The durable music television network”s offshoots MTV Live and MTV Classic have multiple plans to see off the year, including daylong in in memoriam programming that pays tribute to Prince, David Bowie and Sharon Jones in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. MTV Classic offers the most nostalgia, with 24 hours of music videos from each decade of the network’s existence that kicks off with the ’80s at midnight Thursday and closes with the best of the ’00s leading up to midnight on Jan. 1.
‘The Twilight Zone’ marathon on Syfy
In the event you missed the annual run of Rod Serling’s classic series that takes over KTLA on Thanksgiving, Syfy offers its own traditional New Year’s review of “The Twilight Zone” that’s now gone on for 22 years. Beginning at 6 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and continuing through Monday, Jan. 2 at 4 a.m., the network will air the 1983 film and all 128 episodes of the one-of-a-kind series, including Burgess Meredith’s turn in the darkly comic “Time Enough at Last” and William Shatner’s breakdown in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Will the series pack the same haunting punch in the wake of a surreal 2016? Tune in and find out.
“Bond. James Bond” on Esquire
Still held up as an ideal of masculinity and Cold War-era cool by longtime devotees and, evidently, the viewers of Esquire, the men’s magazine-affiliated network slices off the Pierce Brosnan-era Bond for a post-New Year’s marathon. Starting at 7 a.m. Monday, Esquire will air the full run of the stylish, semi-recent franchise that includes “Goldeneye,” “Tomorrow Never Dies,” “The World Is Not Enough” and “Die Another Day.”
“Best of Festivals” and other music marathons on AXS
The live music and pop-culture-centric network offers a look back at some memorable music performances on its network beginning at 8:30 a.m. PST with a look at the Hangout Music Festival, New Orleans’ JazzFest and the Zac Brown Band’s Southern Ground. The programming continues from there with a Gregg Allman marathon that includes an interview with Dan Rather, a star-studded 2014 concert in his honor with Eric Church, Robert Randolph and Dr. John, and the 2016 documentary, “The Allman Brothers Band: After the Crash.” The night is capped by the all-star country special “CMA Music Festival 2016: Country’s Night to Rock.”
New Year’s Day with ‘O.J.: Made in America’ on Viceland
Broadcast in partnership with ESPN films, Vice Media’s network will air all seven hours of Ezra Edelman’s award-winning documentary from at 4 p.m. to midnight on Jan. 1. The murders and trial took on an improbable second life in 2016 with this engrossing and exhaustive feature and the equally acclaimed dramatization, “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” on FX. Viewed in one sitting, “Made in America” offers a sobering look at a story that remains larger than life.
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