TV tonight: 'Live' Christmas, 'Baking'
Saturday Night Live: A Saturday Night Live Christmas
NBC, 9 ET/PT
NBC brings a little more joy to the world with this retrospective special that offers some of Saturday Night Live’s best Christmas-themed skits. One has to assume that means another heaping helping of “Schweddy Balls,” because some classics just never get old.
Bolshoi Babylon
HBO, 9 ET/PT
For those who like their crimes fictional, there’s the fall finale of TNT’s Major Crimes (9 ET/PT), which finds the team tracking a killer who's making his own movie. But for those who prefer truth-is-stranger-than-fiction crime stories, HBO airs this film from Nick Read that follows the aftermath of one of the arts world’s most shocking incidents: the acid-in-the-face attack on Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin by (police say) dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko.
The Great Holiday Baking Show
ABC, 10 ET/PT
Televised cooking contests are an odd breed. How, after all, can you possibly convey how food tastes? Well, here’s one way: You import Mary Berry, the judge of the original British version of this show, and you put her on camera as she enthuses or despairs over some cookie or cake — carrying us along through her descriptions and her charm. No, you still can’t actually taste the gingerbread houses, but for a few minutes, Berry makes you think you can — and that’s enough.