Country strong
TV critic's picks: Friday-Sunday
April 19, 2012 at 8:39PM
"Jennie Garth: A Little Big Country" (8 p.m. Friday, CMT) finds the former "90210" star abandoning Beverly Hills for life on the farm with her three daughters. If the show works, Shannen Doherty will most likely launch a show in which she sets up shop in the Everglades.
The Tao of Karl
Sick of Ricky Gervais yet? Me, neither. "The Ricky Gervais Show" (8 p.m. Friday, HBO), an animated version of his podcast, returns for another season and while it's not my favorite Gervais project, it does feature the wonderfully odd Karl Pilkington, whose idea for a movie about a man's brain being transplanted into Tom Cruise is so ridiculous, it just might work.
Show me the heart
Cuba Gooding Jr. once again is eager to show off his soft-gooey center, this time in "Firelight" (8 p.m. Sunday, KSTP, Ch. 5). He plays a counselor at a women's prison where he's absolutely beloved. The inmates must've seen "Jerry Maguire" 32 times.
Second position
I'm a fan of just about anything Julia Louis-Dreyfus gets involved in, so consider this an unqualified endorsement of "Veep" (9 p.m. Sunday, HBO), in which she plays a vice president who's all too aware that she has the most thankless job in the country.
