Tube Notes

By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service

TONIGHT'S MUST-SEE: "Long Night's Journey Into Day" (2000), 8 p.m., HBO. Emotion — sometimes raw, sometimes muffled — pulses through this powerful, Oscar-nominated documentary. At the core is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Its hearings gathered confessions — and sometimes provided amnesty — for crimes during the dark days of apartheid. This film focuses on four cases — two in which whites killed blacks and two in which enraged blacks struck back with random violence against whites. In either case, the stories are compelling. We're struck by the anguish felt by both the killers and the victims' families. We're also struck by the way an inhumane system can temporarily make the most horrid acts somehow seem natural.

"Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe," 8 p.m., ABC. This movie was filmed in England in 1995, but it never reached America. Now with the world still big on "Survivor," this seems like a logical time to play it. Pierce Brosnan stars as literature's first famous survivor stranded on a remote island after a shipwreck.

"Ed," 9 p.m., NBC. In a rerun, Ed represents a star student who gets a low gym grade.