The sage advice, “Don’t try this at home,” certainly applies to “I Faked My Own Death” (9 p.m., Discovery), a new three-part series about people driven to extremes.
Featuring extensive interviews with detectives and incarcerated criminals, “Death” looks at six cases in which folks carried out elaborate hoaxes to avoid debts, evade mobsters and end relationships in the worst way. Cinematic re-enactments show several bizarre schemes, including one man who robbed a body to perpetrate his fraud and another who parachuted from a burning plane.
• The old HGTV taught you how to make and repair stuff. The new HGTV shows you stuff you want to buy and allows you to watch people who hire other people to renovate their houses and gardens. This trend has run up against the reality of a sour economy, so the new series “The High Low Project” (7:30 p.m.) blends some of the how-to philosophy of the old with the conspicuous consumption of the new.
Designer Sabrina Soto offers homeowners a glance at luxurious makeovers with stupendous price tags to match. She then shows how to duplicate expensive designer decor at a fraction of the cost. In the series opener, she wows a couple with a $31,000 bedroom/office renovation and then demonstrates how — with a little bit of tweaking — she can make the same statement for about $4,000.
• Allen Haff and Ton Jones (“Auction Hunters”) host a three-day “Star Wars” marathon on Spike. It kicks off at noon Saturday with “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.”
Tonight’s other highlights
• An NFL star takes stock in the 2011 family movie “Game Time: Tackling the Past” (7 p.m., NBC).
• LSU and Oregon tangle in college football action (8 p.m., ABC).
• Scheduled on “48 Hours Mystery” (9 p.m., CBS): The husband of a slain doctor claims self-defense.
Cult choice
A screenwriter (William Holden) becomes the kept man of a deranged silent film star (Gloria Swanson) in director Billy Wilder’s 1950 Hollywood satire “Sunset Boulevard” (7 p.m., TCM).
Saturday series
Death of a superhero on “Hawaii Five-0” (7 p.m., CBS) ... On back-to-back episodes of “Cops” (Fox): a bad boyfriend (7 p.m.), armed and dangerous (7:30 p.m.).
A suspect’s story is a hoax on “CSI: Miami” (8 p.m., CBS) ... Debt woes on “American Dad” (8 p.m., Fox) ... Weight worries on “The Cleveland Show” (8:30 p.m., Fox) ... Debra Messing guest-stars on “Law & Order: SVU” (9p.m., NBC).
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