• An Evening With the Dixie Chicks (DECEMBER 10; 8 to 9 p.m.; NBC), at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles last August, means a minimum of chitchat, a maximum of pep, and a wonderfully mean rendition of their signature song about killing the abusive Earl.
• Rocks With Wings (DECEMBER 11; 9 to 11 p.m.; Channel 13) tells the story of the Lady Chieftains, a high-school basketball team from the Navajo community of Shiprock, New Mexico, and the African-American coach from Texas who cajoled them to a championship.
• Hackers: Outlaws and Angels (DECEMBER 11; 10 to 11 p.m.; TLC), while enjoying the time it spends with such roguish cyber–crime lords as Captain Zap and Cold Fire, decides to View With Alarm. These people are cheating the telephone company and reading the Pentagon’s mail! And some of them turn out to be Chinese! Meet the “digital detectives” who are fighting back.
• The Santa Trap (DECEMBER 13; 8 to 10 p.m.; PAX) asks us to care whether Dick Van Patten or Stacy Keach is the real Santa and should therefore be released from jail by Sheriff Corbin Bernsen in time to make his Christmas rounds even if the weather in the great Southwest is far too warm for transplanted New Englander Shelley Long to get in the holiday spirit.
• I Was a Teenage Faust (DECEMBER 15; 8 to 9:45 p.m.; Showtime), with Robert Townsend as Mr. Five, an apparatchik of Stuart Margolin’s Mephisto, hasn’t delivered a soul to hell in almost fifteen years. It’s the territory: central Indiana. But then he discovers Josh Zuckerman being laughed at by all the cool kids in high school, including his own twin sister. There is a country club. There is Morgan Fairchild. There are even some amusing moments.
• New Zealand: The Royal Tour (DECEMBER 15; 9 to 10 p.m.; Travel) looks in on Auckland, the limestone caves of Waitomo, the sacred Maori grounds of Whakarewarewa, the Southern Alps, the Tasman Sea, and anywhere else Prime Minister Helen Clark can get to by jet boat or kayak.
• The Man Who Saved Christmas (DECEMBER 15; 9 to 11 p.m.; CBS) stars Jason Alexander as A. C. Gilbert, the man who invented the Erector Set and who would rather he didn’t have to turn his toy factory into a munitions plant during World War I. Ed Asner plays his father, Kelly Rowan plays his wife, and I believe every other word of it. ß