Chocolate News is the African-American Parody of Current Affairs

    Finally, a worthy successor to the late, lamented Chappelle’s Show. In Chocolate News (Wednesday, 10:30 p.m., Comedy Central), the talented comedian David Alan Grier purports to explore current affairs from an African-American perspective. What he really does is lampoon black culture, stereotypes about black culture and the white culture that traffics in those stereotypes.
    {mosimage}One “report” profiles a self-important hip-hop bonehead who, hired to make a public service announcement for No Child Left Behind, merely adapts one of his usual filthy videos to the educational theme. (The sexy dancing girls supply the “behind” in No Child Left Behind.) We hear from Caucasians for the Fair Use of the N Word Commission and Maya Angelou (Grier in drag) recites a pseudo-profound poem about Barack Obama. Clearly, no sacred cow is safe during this half-hour.
    In the event of an African-American president, Chocolate News could be the go-to fake news program of the next four years. Watch your back, Daily Show.

LIVING PROOF
Saturday, 9 p.m. (Lifetime)
    Harry Connick Jr. got famous doing a bad impersonation of Frank Sinatra. So you can hardly blame him for sticking with his forte — bad impersonations — in this TV movie about the real-life researcher who developed the breast cancer treatment Herceptin. Connick tries to look all scientific in a white lab coat, but you can only laugh at his earnest-Ph.D. line readings. “Two-hundred thousand women a year are diagnosed with breast cancer!” he barks at his new assistant (Amanda Bynes). “Getting Herceptin to work can save a lot of those lives!”

THE LIFE AND TIMES of TIM
Sunday, 11 p.m. (HBO)
    This animated series follows an excruciatingly normal guy named Tim. The humor and animation are low-temperature — a perfect match for Tim himself, a young man who’s going nowhere slow. He has a cruddy corporate job, an okay girlfriend and a penchant for getting sucked into dubious situations. In this week’s episode, a family baptism goes bad, suggesting that there’s little hope for today’s alienated man.
    You’d have to be as much of a loser as Tim to find this series funny. That’s why I…um, hate it.

FRANK TV
Tuesday, 11 p.m. (TBS)
    With the presidential campaign in full swing, you’d think that impressionist Frank Caliendo would be in hog heaven. But in the season premiere of his sketch comedy show, he wastes time on toothless bits about David Letterman, James Gandolfini and Star Wars. The only political sketch is a clunker about John McCain’s whiteness.