• Presidio Med (January 17, 8 to 9 p.m.,and January 22, 10 to 11 p.m.; CBS) returns with onefraught episode devoted to the emergency aftercare ofan amazing number of “preemie” babies allborn in the same 24-hour period, with JulianneNicholson and Blythe Danner in the maternity ward.Then comes an episode in which Dana Delany, whosemarriage has fallen apart, tries to save HallieEisenberg from leukemia. Neither hour is for thesqueamish.
• Monte Walsh (January 17, 18 and 19; 8to 10:30 p.m.; TNT) stars Tom Selleck as the Very LastCowboy, so partial to his horsey solitude that he letsIsabella Rossellini and Keith Carradine practicallydie in front of him before shooting some people andturning his back on a Wild West show (run by WallaceShawn) and the twentieth century (horseless buggies).Nary an ironic wince.
• MythQuest (January 19; 10:30 to 11:30a.m.; Channel 13) is a new series for kids in whichbrother and sister Christopher Jacot and MeredithHenderson search for their vanished scientist fatherin a “cybermuseum” that plunges them intothe mysteries of bygone cultures. Thus: minotaurs andsnow demons, doppelgängers and Quetzalcoatl,Osiris of Egypt and the Swahili storytelling snake.Nifty.
• Sounder (January 19; 7 to 9 p.m.; ABC)is an unnecessary remake of the 1972 feature film,directed by the same Kevin Hooks who starred as theblack sharecropper’s son in the original. PaulWinfield, who played the boy’s father the firsttime around, plays his teacher here. Carl Lumbly isthe new father, Suzzanne Douglas the new mother,Daniel Lee Robertson III the new boy. And the oldmagic still works.
• The Murder of Emmett Till (January 20;9 to 10 p.m.; Channel 13) will turn your stomach allover again. Listen closely to the mother of the14-year-old Chicago boy tortured, mutilated, andmurdered for whistling at a Delta white woman. Thenread Studs Terkel, who quotes Mamie Till Mobley (whodied last week) in most of his books.
• Brother Outsider: The Life of BayardRustin (January 20; 10 to 11:30 p.m.; Channel 13)is a P.O.V. look at the civil-rights leader, abrilliant theorist and exponent of nonviolence, whoseems always to have embarrassed his movementcolleagues by the simple fact of his homosexuality.The irony isn’t lost on those who remember himin this tough-minded documentary.