Only a few more days till Valentine’s Day, folks. A time to show your significant other just how much you care.
Establishing a romantic mood is essential, and it’s never too early to start. And, as is often the case, television can provide an easy, inexpensive, low-maintenance alternative as a lead-up to the main event:
YOUNG LOVE
Was there ever a more classic tale of unrequited love than the saga of Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl? Their star-crossed affair plays out yet again Tuesday night at 8 p.m. on ABC, in A Charlie Brown Valentine, a 2002 special produced (apparently against his will) two years after the death of Peanuts papa Charles Schulz.
Filling out the hour is the gang’s original 1975 Valentine ’toon, Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown.
DATE NIGHT AT THE MOVIES
Toss a bag of popcorn in the microwave, crack open a bottle of wine and enjoy some of the most romantic movies ever to hit the big screen. Most of them, oddly enough, are airing in the morning.
Romeo & Juliet: It all starts here, first with Shakespeare, and then the 1936 movie version with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard as the titular doomed lovers, with John Barrymore along to lend gravitas. TCM Canada, Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.
Love Story: Love means never having to say you’re sorry. An often useful, if unrealistic sentiment, first coined by Ali MacGraw in the 1970 romance classic, also starring Ryan O’Neal before he got all wrinkled and scary. It’s on Friday at 7:40 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. on The Movie Network’s MRPIX.
Gone with the Wind: One of the most romantic movies of all time stars Clark Gable and Vivienne Leigh, airing on MRPIX Wednesday at an appropriately cuddly 11:50 p.m., basking in the warm afterglow of Atlanta on fire.
Working Girl: Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith, lots of bad ’80s fashion —what more could you want? Thursday at 5:30 a.m. on AMC Canada.
Bridges of Madison County: Craggy Clint Eastwood woos a married Meryl Streep, and the screen ain’t big enough for both of them. But if you’ve got a big-screen TV — and even if you don’t — you will get completely sucked in to this compelling tale of middle-aged attraction. SUNTV has it Tuesday at 8 p.m., with CTV re-running it late on the night of V-Day, at 12:05 a.m., actually five minutes into the morning after.
Out of Africa: Even more lovestruck Meryl — that girl gets around — a world away in Kenya, in the biographical romance airing Monday at 3:10 p.m. on MRPIX.
REALLY REEL ROMANCE
Fantasy’s fine, but let’s get real. Thursday’s CBC Doc Zone has the ultimate happily-ever-after with Love Interrupted, two Romeo & Juliet-ish tales of young couples driven apart by race, religion, class and/or parental disapproval, who somehow manage to reunite later on in life.
Which is more than you can say for Romeo and Juliet. That starts at 9 p.m.
From reunion back to separation, the second season of CBC’s hit reality show, The Week the Women Went is the ultimate way to tell your loved one how much they are wanted and needed, airing Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBC.
