Today


10 P.M. (Science) TED TALKS In this collection of the best TED conference talks, the producer and director J. J. Abrams tells of a “mystery box” he received as a child that he never opened, explaining that his fascination with the unknown drives his work. Bonnie Bassler, above, a molecular biologist, discusses a chemical language that allows bacteria to communicate. Robin Ince, a comedian, riffs on the relationship between science and wonder. And the inventor Skylar Tibbits speaks about the future of building and the nascent science of self-assembly.


8 P.M. (CBS) UNDERCOVER BOSS The chief executive of Yankee Candle learns how his company works at the store level when he dons a disguise (a curly wig and a soul patch) and pretends to be a new hire. But his go-getter attitude raises eyebrows when he expends considerable effort on customer service, and he almost blows his cover when he speaks up testily about a store’s sloppy appearance.


8 P.M. (NBC) WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Rita Wilson, right, the actress and a producer of the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” travels to Greece to piece together her family history. She visits her father’s birthplace and hometown, then follows in his footsteps to Bulgaria, where he lived in difficult circumstances before traveling to the United States.


8 P.M. (Fox) KITCHEN NIGHTMARES The fourth season concludes as Gordon Ramsay visits Zocalo, a Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia, with plans to improve the food by teaching the chef to use high-quality ingredients (and to cook with the types of cheese that recipes call for).


9 P.M. (13) SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY AT 100 This installment of “Great Performances” celebrates the San Francisco Symphony’s centennial with Itzhak Perlman, who performs Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and the pianist Lang Lang, who plays Liszt. The program also includes narration about the history of the orchestra.


9 P.M. (HGTV) LIVING ABROAD The host Chi-Lan Lieu heads to a new international destination for each episode of this series, which profiles Americans living all over the globe. In the premiere episode Americans living in Tokyo learn to speak and read Japanese and experience culture shock as they adjust to costly, compact apartments; puzzle out the complex subway; and share a dynamic, vibrant metropolis with millions of others. At 9:30 Americans in Dubai describe a place that adheres to religious traditions and abounds with opulence.


9:30 P.M. (TMC) THE JOB (2009) Forget data entry. The temp agency in this film, directed by Shem Bitterman, wants candidates for much more serious, and lethal, work. Bubba (Patrick Flueger), who is unemployed and desperate for a job so he can get married, accepts a murder-for-hire offer without being fully prepared for the responsibilities.


11 P.M. (Showtime) DRIVE ANGRY (2011) Nicolas Cage (below right, with David Morse) plays a man who escapes from hell to save his grandchild from a cult of Satan worshippers in this movie from Patrick Lussier. “The details of his character are both preposterous and beside the point,” A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. Amber Heard plays a gruff waitress with a chip on her shoulder who joins Mr. Cage to “drive angry” in a 1969 Dodge Charger in order to find the nefarious cult leader before the next full moon. Mr. Scott wrote that the film could almost be mistaken for a “whole retrospective of disreputable ’70s B pictures” from “the same vintage as some of its cars.”


11:35 P.M. (FLIX) EATING RAOUL (1982) Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov play a strait-laced married couple who dream of moving out of Los Angeles and opening a restaurant in the country. But they are stuck in a Hollywood apartment building crawling with swingers and drunks. One reprobate breaks into their home and assaults Mary, so Paul kills the man with a frying pan. Finding a lot of cash in the dead man’s wallet, they get an idea for raising money for their dream restaurant and clearing their community of unsavory characters. In his review in The Times, Vincent Canby called the film “a very funny comedy about sex, murder and cannibalism” that is “full of smiles, punctuated here and there by marvelously unseemly guffaws, but most of the time it works its little wonders quietly.” THOMAS GAFFNEY