TV Party for Thursday, August 18th

Thursday is Poker Night on Bravo, with the sixth tournament of “Celebrity Poker Showdown” starting tonight at 8, and the first game is all about the reality, baby. Yes, if you didn’t get enough reality stars yesterday on “Battle of the Network Reality Stars”, tonight you can feast your senses on the poker-playing ability of the Amazing Race’s Charla Faddoul, The Real World and Surreal Life’s Trishelle, The Bachelor’s Andrew Firestone, Survivor: Pearl Islands’ Johnny Fairplay, and everybody’s favorite whiny annoying bad girl, Omarosa from The Apprentice and the Surreal Life. The winner of tonight’s first round goes on to play winners from later rounds, possibly an actual celebrity like Meat Loaf, Alex Trebeck or Rosie O’Donnell.

If you’d rather immerse yourself in historical reality rather than poker TV reality, head down to KCTS for “Battlefield Britain”, the series that explores the key battles in the history of Britain and their effects on the country’s history. Tonight is episode 7 in the series, Culloden – 1746. In the final battle of the Jacobite rebellion, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his exhausted army were slaughtered in the boggy ground of Drummossie, thus cementing the English and Scottish crowns together.

At 9 stay on KCTS for Spy, a British reality show where civilians learn if they have what it takes to be a secret agent. In tonight’s episode, Crossing the Line, the six remaining recruits explore the core work of an intelligence officer, the art of cultivating an agent. They team up in pairs and take temporary jobs at a barber shop, a gym and a clothing store. Their fellow employees are unaware that their new coworkers are spies. After working undercover cultivating and befriending a complete stranger in order to turn them into their agent, it is time for the recruits to complete their mission. They will have to manipulate their target and get them to cross the line of morality, by persuading them to lie, sign a fake document or help them in a legally questionable way.

Finally, at 10 head to TLC for “Jackpot! Overnight Millionaires” Take a look at the dramatic differences in the homes and lifestyles of lottery winners before and after they hit jackpots. This reality-based special features seven lottery millionaires; from a former convict to a single mother living in a one-room hotel. I’m hoping that one of them loses all their money in a series of bad investments and crazy gambling sprees, but that’s just ‘cause I’m jealous.That’s your TV Party for Thursday, August 18th, for Northwest Indy Radio I’m Scott Chicken