Ken Burns, photographer: Cable Risdon

Best-bets for April 5: Burns and basketball’s best

1) “Hemingway” debut, 8-10 p.m., PBS, rerunning at 10; continues through Wednesday. Here is one of the best shows of this season – or any season. Ken Burns (shown here) is at his best when tracing a big and complicated life … and few lives were bigger or more complex that Ernest Hemingway’s. He was brash and macho, yet insecure. He told about (and sometimes exaggerated) great adventures, but he also wrote fiction slowly and carefully, in a no-frills style that created classics. Read more…

1) “Hemingway” debut, 8-10 p.m., PBS, rerunning at 10; continues through Wednesday. Here is one of the best shows of this season – or any season. Ken Burns (shown here) is at his best when tracing a big and complicated life … and few lives were bigger or more complex that Ernest Hemingway’s. He was brash and macho, yet insecure. He told about (and sometimes exaggerated) great adventures, but he also wrote fiction slowly and carefully, in a no-frills style that created classics.

2) Basketball, 9 p.m. ET, CBS. It wasn’t easy, but the NCAA managed to hold an entire, 68-team tournament in one spot, in or near Indianapolis. Here’s the championship game, with a preview at 8:30.

3) “Superman & Lois,” 8-9:30 p.m., CW. Here’s a second chance to see the opener, which is surprisingly muted, but well-made. Lois Lane is a top reporter at the Daily Planet, but her husband, Clark Kent, finds his job is iffy. Their sons have little in common except this: Neither realizes that his dad is Superman. Then Clark is called back home to Kansas, where lives start to transform.

4) “American Idol” (ABC) and “The Voice” (NBC), both 8-10 p.m. On both shows, it’s time for duets. For “Idol,” that comes at a turning point: On Sunday, its field will be trimmed to 16 and the live performances will begin.

5) Mysreries, any time, www.acorn.tv, This is a day for crime tales from three nations. They range from the fierce intensity of Ireland’s “Bloodlands” (which concludes its four-week story powerfully) to the mellow style of Canada’s “Murdoch Mysteries,” which debuted two episodes Friday and now has one each Monday. Somewhere between is New Zealand’s “Brokenwood Mysteries,” which has a new, movie-length episode each Monday.

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