Diana Ross Sparkles In `Out Of Darkness'

"Out of Darkness," "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., Channel 4. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Diana Ross is both producer and star of this new TV movie, and Barbara Turner's script provides Ross with the kind of showy role actors love - a chance to go mad!

With lines like "My brain has been stolen" and "My head is blowing apart!," Ross is thoroughly convincing portraying Pauline, a 42-year-old woman suffering from a 17-year-long siege of paranoid schizophrenia.

When she's not in institutions, Pauline is making life miserable for her mother and sister, and scaring her young daughter.

For at least the first half of the film, Ross gets plenty of chances to destroy her surroundings, scream and hurl invective at friends, family and strangers.

Eventually a new drug helps turn Pauline's life around but she must also deal with the fact she'll never recover the lost years. It is at this point that the film becomes more interesting as it also becomes weakest.

Don't know how

Neither Turner nor Ross know quite how to convey this transition and make it believable, and because of the time constraints of the movie, her recovery seems to be accomplished much too quickly. Nor is her brief fling with handsome Carl Lumbly convincing - it's there to include a bedroom scene.

But there's no doubting Ross' concern about the problems of mental illness or wanting to help - she concludes the movie by

stepping out of character to urge viewers with questions about mental illness to call a hotline number. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Murder and mayhem

"In the Best of Families," CBS miniseries, 9 p.m., Sunday and Tuesday, Channel 7. ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Betrayed by Love,"

"ABC Monday Night Movie," 9 p.m. Monday, Channel 4. ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Confessions" "NBC Monday Night Movie," 9 p.m., Channel 5. -------------------------------------------------------------------

We're back into fact-based murder and mayhem with the rest of this week's TV movies which allow you to meet a lot of folks who, in real life, you'd probably cross the street to avoid.

"In the Best of Families," originally titled "Bitter Blood" and with a subtitle of "Marriage, Pride and Madness," Kelly McGillis plays Susie, a tiresome 1970s version of a Southern belle who makes the mistake of marrying Tom, a laid-back dental student played by Keith Carradine. Two kids and a move to Albuquerque, N.M., later, Susie is sick of Tom and the marriage so takes the kids and returns to her doting parents (Holland Taylor and Ken Jenkins) in the South.

Under the spell

There she falls under the spell of Fritz, her cousin, a survivalist gun nut played moodily by Harry Hamlin, and the two set about doing in members of the family, culminating in a final chase as Tom tries to retrieve his two sons from an ever-scarier Susie.

"In the Best of Families" is probably intended as a cautionary tale of divorce - neither Tom nor Susie are depicted as being very realistic about their marriage, although later every mean trick they pull is supposedly because they love their kids so much.

Excellent work

Jeff Bieckner gets a terrific performance from McGillis who becomes thoroughly despicable by the end of the film. But Bleckner is almost too good at his job - before the film is over you want to escape from all these destructive characters.

More destructive Southerners are on the loose in the equally well-acted "Betrayed by Love" in which Patricia Arquette, looking very much like Cybill Shepherd, portrays a woman nearly as self-deluding as the one played by McGillis. Trapped with two kids and a lover she cares nothing about, Arquette manufactures romantic fantasies about an FBI agent (Steven Weber) who comes to her small town on a case and for whom Arquette serves as a paid informant.

There are overtones of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" in what eventually happens, with co-star Mare Winningham giving another sterling performance, under John Power's direction, as Arquette's sister who shows a bulldog's tenacity about solving the mystery of Arquette's disappearance.

More murder

Least interesting of these three films is "Confessions," subtitled "Two Faces of Evil."

It concerns the murder of a California policeman - and confessions by two different young men, played by James Wilder and Jason Bateman. Both are pathetic losers and since never know much about the murdered policeman - and eventually know more than we want to about these two young men - it's difficult to get very involved, despite the usual fine performance by James Earl Jones as a defense attorney trying to sort out which one is the guilty one. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Crowning achievement

"To Play the King," four-part PBS "Masterpiece Theatre," 9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 9. -------------------------------------------------------------------

If you viewed that wonderfully wicked "House of Cards," which just encored on "Masterpiece Theatre," then you know what to expect from this four-part continuation of that story in which we watched the diabolically clever Francis Urquhart, brilliantly played by Ian Richardson, work his way from party whip to British prime minister.

Now, in "To Play the King," we find him (a) being rather bored with his job and (b) having to contend with a newly-crowned King (a Prince Charles type played by Michael Kitchen).

The Prime Minister soon realizes the King wants to make his own mark on British politics, a thought that horrifies the Prime Minister, who soon sets schemes in motion to see this doesn't happen.

Anyone at all conversant with British politics - even those who do no more than follow the fates of the British royals in the newsstand tabloids - will chortle at the way novelist Michael Dobbs and scripter Andrew Davies have appropriated real-life events for their fictional escapades.

Plenty of help

In addition to Richardson, who has turned Urquhart into just about the best performance since the heyday of Sir Laurence 0livier, he gets ample help from Diane Fletcher as his equally conniving wife, who loves being the power behind whatever throne is handy; Rowena King as an assistant press secretary with her own agenda; Nicholas Farrell as Rowena's boss, about to come apart at the seams, and new characters played by Kitty Aldridge (a public pollster whom Urquhart seduces into joining his camp), and Bernice Stegers as a member of the royal family with a great head for finance.

"Masterpiece Theatre" has been drifting along this season with no particularly compelling reasons to watch it. "To Play the King" changes all that! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Fox newcomer

"The George Carlin Show," premiere of Fox sitcom, 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Channel 13. -------------------------------------------------------------------

If you're a George Carlin fan, you'll probably enjoy this new sitcom. Others might think about watching something else.

It's an attempt to mix Carlin's monologue style with a "Cheers" type setting and the cast includes a likable bartender (Anthony Starke), a beautiful waitress (Paige French), an upper-class guy (Christopher Rich) and a Damon Runyonesque character who seems to have escaped from "Guys and Dolls" but who, as played by Alex Rocco, is more fun than anyone else in the show, including Carlin.

As a supporting character in someone else's series, Carlin's opinionated character might be more fun than it is here where he's the center of attention.