Tube Notes

By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service

• MUST-SEE: Basketball, 3 p.m., CBS: This is the big one as two teams compete for the college championship. The winners of Saturday's games (Arizona-Michigan State and Duke-Maryland) collide in Minneapolis.

• MUST-SEE 2: "Midwives," 9 p.m., Lifetime. Two great actresses link in a wrenchingly emotional story. One is Sissy Spacek, who's been around for decades. Her Academy Award (for "Coal Miner's Daughter") was in 1980. The other is Alison Pill, an amazing teenager. This year, she was good in an ABC miniseries (as Judy Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft) and great in TNT's "Baby"; now comes stunning work. Spacek plays a Vermont midwife enmeshed in a medical and legal crisis. Pill plays her daughter, the story's narrator. Guiding them is Glenn Jordan, who has directed many of TV's best films. Watching Spacek and Pill is like seeing James Woods and James Garner in Jordan's classic "Promise": Two great actors are on top of a compelling, and sometimes devastating, story.

• "Picture Perfect" (1997), 7 p.m., ABC: This is one of those lightweight movies that work better on TV. Jennifer Aniston lusts for a handsome hunk (Kevin Bacon), but she pretends to be engaged to Jay Mohr. The lie grows, in predictable, but humorous, fashion.

• "Eco-Challenge," 8 p.m., USA Network: Before he brought "Survivor" to America, Mark Burnett created this competition, with teams racing across brutal terrain. This year, it takes place in Borneo. Here's the second of five hours over four days; the finale airs Wednesday.

• "Purgatory" (1999), 8 p.m., TNT: Here's another chance to see a terrific cable film. A band of cowboy crooks, led by Eric Roberts, rumbles into a town where people (including Sam Shepard and Randy Quaid) seem oddly peaceful.

• "First Years," 8 p.m., NBC: In the first two episodes, Mackenzie Astin has skillfully played Warren Harrison, an earnest young lawyer who lacks the breezy social skills of his colleagues. Tonight, Patty Duke — Astin's mother in real life — plays his mom. Warren plans to tell her he's gay, then is detoured.

• "Scottsboro: An American Tragedy" part of PBS' "American Experience" series, 9 p.m., PBS: (check local listings). In 1931, nine black people were accused of raping two white women in Alabama. This follows the long struggle to free them.

• "Gideon's Crossing," 9 p.m., ABC. Ben (Andre Braugher) faces a crisis with his son and a dispute in the hospital.