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Celebrate everyone’s favorite course — dessert!
America’s Home Cooking: Sweets airs Saturday, March 15 at 12 p.m. on WXXI-TV.
Host Chris Fennimore walks you through some of his favorite, mouth-watering recipes like Kentucky Derby pie and loaded chocolate biscotti. Learn the tradition around Nana’s Italian love cake and get instructions on how to make the perfect truffle.
Whitney Houston performs in Durban in 1994, marking the first major Western artist to visit post-apartheid South Africa after Mandela’s election.
Whitney Houston: The Concert for a New South Africa airs Friday, March 14 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
Celebrate Houston’s transcendent 1994 performance, which brought joy to a newly liberated country. Houston was the first major Western recording artist to perform in the post-apartheid nation following President Nelson Mandela’s historic election.
Celebrate the enigmatic cellist whose career was cruelly curtailed by multiple sclerosis at age 28.
Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy airs Friday, March 28 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
Those who know, consider Jacqueline du Pré one of the greatest cellists of all time – certainly in the top three – despite a career that was cruelly curtailed by multiple sclerosis at just twenty-eight years old. The force of nature took away her prodigious gift and her joy of performing and she endured fourteen years of unremitting illness. However, during her short time on the international concert platform – about a decade – she had the musical world at her feet, with an expressive style that cast a spell on anyone who saw her perform. Introduced and narrated by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Jacqueline du Pre: Genius and Tragedy, tells the story of who she was and why she was such an extraordinary musician.
It is full of candid moments off stage and in rehearsal, together with powerful concert performances. The Elgar Cello Concerto would become her signature piece and the benchmark against which all other renditions would be measured; its lamenting melody, inescapably resonating with her own tragic demise. In swinging 1960s London, the Beatles were topping the pop charts, but Jacqueline du Pre was the poster child for a new golden generation of artists and friends, who injected a youthful excitement into a staid industry a classical ‘rat pack’ that included Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta and her husband, Daniel Barenboim. As a glamourous and musically charged couple, Barenboim and du Pre were like a modern version of Clara and Robert Schumann; together, they devoured the cello and piano repertoire and the recordings they made continue to delight audiences across the globe. Du Pre was a blithe spirit, known to her friends as ‘Smiley’ but on stage with her cello, she could communicate the most profound feelings, found in the depths of great music. Our interviews provide an incomparable insight from those who knew du Pre best, including RuthAnn Cannings, who cared for her throughout her illness. Described as, “beyond words,” du Pre’s innate abilities confounded even her fellow musicians, who struggled to rationalize how music flowed so naturally from her. She studied under the greats – Casals, Tortelier, and Rostropovich – but it is sequences with her teacher William Pleeth, her “cello daddy,” that provide some of our most intimate and engaging footage. The affection for Jacqueline du Pre and the wonder at her playing remains undiminished, nearly forty years after her death in 1987.
This film is presented as part of Move to IncludeTM, an award-winning national initiative to promote disability inclusion, representation, and accessibility in public media.
This special focuses on the personal, medical, and spiritual issues surrounding end-of-life care, the options available, and steps that can be taken to put those wishes to practical use.
Going Your Way airs Saturday, April 5 at 3 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
The documentary’s title highlights the active role many people are now taking to ensure their death goes according to their own plans and wishes. End-of-life planning doesn’t have to be painful. We’ll learn from the experts and real people who have stories to share about preparing for life and death.
This special WXXI broadcast is made possible with support from Oasis Rochester.
This film traces the ascent of Cambodian American teenager Ashley Chea, a basketball prodigy whose life intensifies amid college recruitment, injury, and triumph.
The Future of Nature airs Wednesdays, March 26 through April 16 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
This four-part series follows a growing number of inspiring people, fighting to save nature and helps to understand the impact of carbon on our planet and how nature is helping to mitigate its effects.
Episodes include:
In Oceans, airing March 26, see how oceans, and the organisms within them, help to draw down carbon at scale.
Grasslands, airing April 2, explores the planet’s rich grasslands, dynamic, huge, and above all vital for our planet’s future.
In Forests, airing April 9, understand the carbon drawdown superpower of forests, and why restoring and protecting them is critical.
Humans, airing April 16, looks at how humans can become a force for good throughout the natural world.
This film traces the ascent of Cambodian American teenager Ashley Chea, a basketball prodigy whose life intensifies amid college recruitment, injury, and triumph.
Independent Lens “Home Court” Monday, March 24 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the web, WXXI app (Android & Apple IOS ) and PBS App.
Filmed over three years of Ashley’s high school career, ”Home Court” is a coming-of-age story that relays the highs and lows of her immigrant family, surmounting racial and class differences, and personal trials that include a devastating knee injury.
The film opens in Ashley’s sophomore year of high school. She shuttles between her home in a lower-income neighborhood in Los Angeles and her private school, Flintridge Prep, while traveling to youth basketball tournaments and visiting colleges around the country. Ashley’s parents work long hours at their donut shop, so her coach, Jayme Kiyomura Chan, steps in where they cannot.
With the pressure of being one of the top basketball recruits in the country, tensions rise as Ashley navigates college offers and her family’s input. Meanwhile, she grapples with the task of leading her high school team, as well as being a leader in her community and the mounting responsibility to represent her culture. The film culminates in the bittersweet moments of Ashley leaving for college with her family.
The period drama Marie Antoinette continues to chronicle the life of one of history’s most influential and controversial figures.
Marie Antoinette, Season 2 premieres Sunday, March 23, 2025 at 10p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the web and the PBS app.
Emilia Schüle (“Berlin Dance School”) returns as the title character, Marie Antoinette, and Louis Cunningham (“Bridgerton”) reprises his role as Louis XVI. The series, a CANAL+ Creation Originale in association with CAPA Drama (Newen Studios), Banijay Studios France, and Beside Productions, invites audiences to peek behind the curtain of the personal and political life of the last Queen of France.
Marie Antoinette sees Antoinette and Louis facing unprecedented challenges at the height of their power. As financial crises loom across the nation and political rivalries intensify, the royal couple must navigate an increasingly hostile court and a changing France. From Versailles to the Palais Royal, the seeds of a revolution began to take root, threatening the very foundations of France’s long-standing monarchy.
The ensemble cast includes Freya Mavor, Jack Archer (“Call the Midwife”), Jasmine Blackborow (“Shadow and Bone”), Oscar Lesage (“Dangerous Liaisons”), Crystal Shepherd-Cross (“Chronicles of the Sun”), Roxane Duran (“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”), Caroline Piette (“Beats Per Minute”) and others.
Photo: Patrick ALBENQUE (Breteuil), Emilia Schüle (Marie Antoinette), Louis Cunningham (Louis XVI), Guy HENRY (Vergennes) • Credit: Caroline Dubois / Capa Drama / Canal Plus
Two-time Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, has its awaited company premiere.
Great Performances at the Met “Grounded” airs Friday, March 21, 2025 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, headlines in the tour-de-force role of Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she adjusts to this new way of doing battle, she struggles under the pressure to be the perfect soldier, the perfect wife, and the perfect mother all at the same time. Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin takes the podium, leading a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who sweeps Jess off her feet. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.
Photo: Emily D’Angelo as Jess and Kyle Miller as the Sensor • Credit: Ken Howard
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