http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/arts/makers-and-hair-jacked-among-alternative-tv-offerings.html 2014-11-04 00:49:49 ‘Makers’ and ‘Hair Jacked,’ Among Alternative TV Offerings Shows like “Hair Jacked” and “How to Be a Grown Up” offer viewers alternatives to major network programming. === The World Series is over, and the first cancellations of the new TV season have been recorded, so that must mean it’s time for the mid-autumn television malaise: After weeks of being pummeled with a lot of new shows, suddenly everything seems drab. But that’s why we have 300 channels now instead of just three. If you’re willing to expand your horizons and lower or perhaps jettison your standards, you can still find new television on which to fritter away your free time. Here are four shows that may not have been on your radar, beginning with something relatively highbrow and suitable for Election Day, then spiraling downward into outright silliness: HER TIME It’s a fairly elementary survey of the struggle of women to secure a place in the political arena, particularly at the federal level, progressing from Senator Margaret Chase Smith and other pioneers to the current Congress. The program is a bit glossy; watch it and you may conclude that there has never been a corrupt or incompetent female politician. But it’s a useful reminder, especially for younger viewers, of just how recently the males-only door was broken down. As Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat, puts it in describing how the composition of the Senate has evolved, “To go from 2 percent to 20 percent in my lifetime in this institution — I felt that it was like landing on the moon.” IT’S A MATURE FUNNY Among the subjects in the premiere was “How to Deal With Neighbors.” Tom Segura had a wry take. “Let’s all grow up and stop being so falsely friendly as neighbors,” he said. “I don’t want to know anything else about you. I mean, we just park near each other.” BEHIND DOOR 3: A MOHAWK Two customers come into what appears to be a regular hair salon, only to find themselves sucked into participating in a game show. They have already amassed points with their responses to what seems like idle chitchat by the receptionist, but then, after the “reveal” tells them they’re on TV, things get really bizarre. In the premiere, the two contestants answered questions they had to read backward in a mirror and competed in a sort of charades played by drawing on a mirror with shaving cream. The champion in each episode advances to a final round with a $10,000 prize looming, but a wrong answer there results in a punishment not seen on “Jeopardy!”: a cruelly ridiculous haircut. LARGE BUT ELUSIVE They begin in a mysterious tunnel in Goshen, Mass., a stone structure that they suggest could be a burial chamber for a giant. A cave-in conveniently prevents them from either proving or disproving their theory, but it’s nice to see someone on TV who’s looking for something other than Bigfoot.