Screen Gems: TV the week of July 13

The Closer (9 p.m. Monday, TNT); Saving Grace (10 p.m. Monday, TNT) -- Okay, we're only going to go over this once, so pay attention. In The Closer, Kyra Sedgwick is back for a fourth season as a tough blond cop chick who craves candy and fighting with her parents. In Saving Grace, Holly Hunter is back for a second season as a tough blond cop chick who craves liquor and flashing her elderly neighbor. See? They are too two different shows.

The Last Conquistador (11 p.m. Tuesday, WPBT-PBS 2) -- The city government of El Paso, Texas, having eliminated crime, poverty, homelessness, traffic jams and annoying yappy little dogs, discovered it had $2 million and absolutely no useful purpose for which it could be spent. So the city council did the only sensible thing and spent the money on an 18-ton, 34-feet-tall statue of a guy on a horse. No one protested this eminently sensible use of taxpayer dollars until folks discovered which guy on a horse: the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, who was kind of mean even by the standards of
the conquistadors. (His main contribution to local culture was amputating the left foot of every adult male member of the Acoma Indian tribe. The women were merely enslaved.) That's the point at which, as this documentary airing as part of the P.O.V. series delicately puts it, "troubles arise."

Hurl (9 p.m. Tuesday, G4) -- In this new game show, contestants eat blueberry pie and clam chowder as fast as they can until they, well, puke. Oh, and if the eating alone doesn't do it, they go on
amusement-park rides with names like the Merry-go-Retch. Go ahead, scoff if you will, but as soon as the BBC produces a version of this show hosted by Helen Mirren, PBS will snap it up.

The Gong Show (10 p.m. Thursday, Comedy Central) -- And if the Merry-go-Retch doesn't finish off those Hurl contestants, they watch this.

Note: Days and times for PBS shows are for the Miami area, and may differ elsewhere.