Best Bets on TV Tonight

"The Golden Globes" (8 p.m., NBC): Oh, how we love the Golden Globes. Other awards shows may wield more clout, but this event, which honors achievements in television as well as the movies, usually is teeming with more spontaneity, humor and unexpected moments. Tonight, they'll hand out the annual Cecil B. DeMille Award to Anthony Hopkins.
"Lincoln" (8 p.m., The History Channel): "Lincoln" interweaves a full life with the dwindling hours of April 14, 1865 -- Abraham Lincoln's last full day on Earth. Just as it never strays far from his tragic end, this intriguing three-hour portrait keeps a tight focus on the suffering Lincoln endured throughout the 56 years that went before. Somewhat of an exercise in psychohistory, "Lincoln" plumbs his lifelong depression and identifies it as a motivating factor, a driving force that helps account for his greatness. He had grown up ugly, poor and unschooled. He was plagued by emotional traumas and thoughts of suicide he never escaped. Then, in the White House, he faced a crisis unlike any chief executive who had preceded him: the Civil War, ripping the country apart and leaving 600,000 of its people dead. With the expected archival photos, footage of landmarks and dramatic re-enactments, "Lincoln" truly comes alive thanks to a dozen authorities whose testimony is deftly stitched together into an illuminating and inspiring narrative. A man who called himself "the loneliest man in the world," Lincoln lives on as perhaps the nation's most admired. This documentary helps explain why.