`Breathing Lessons': This Is What Good TV Is All About

"Breathing Lessons," "Hallmark Hall of Fame," 9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 7.

Television can be so perverse. Just when you think it can't sink much lower, after a week of docudramas about abused wives and beastly husbands, TV can turn around and come up with a movie like "Breathing Lessons" that reaffirms your faith in both the medium and in humanity.

It helps to have a charming novel by Anne Tyler as the original source and it certainly helps to have the leading characters played by such talented pros as Joanne Woodward and James Garner. But equally important are behind-the-scenes individuals - writer Robert Lenski, director/producer John Erman - with the integrity and willingness to trust the essential worth of a story about human beings rather than cardboard characters used to illustrate some news clipping.

Garner and Woodward portray Ira and Maggie Moran, two fiftysomethings married 29 years, a good marriage and a comfortable one, so comfortable each can complain to the other without fearing it will ruin their relationship (while recognizing that the complaints haven't the slightest chance of changing the other!).

"Breathing Lessons" covers one day in that marriage, a day full of hopes and heartaches, laughter and tears - and a day which we're privileged to be invited along to experience with the Morans.

When we meet Ira and Maggie, they're getting ready to drive 90 miles from Baltimore to Deer Lick, Pa., to attend the funeral of the husband of Maggie's best friend. And through the random conversation that occurs between these two we soon discern Maggie is the romantic, Ira the wry realist. The trip is not without its incidents, including a slight accident and a stop for snacks and a map that is one of the movie's most endearing scenes as Maggie strikes up a friendship with a waitress, delightfully played by Eileen Heckart.

The funeral is not without its comic moments - the widow, blithely played by Joyce Van Patten, might easily be termed a Merry Widow - and later, as Maggie and Ira return to Baltimore, they have another sidetrip involving a dignified old gentleman, played to perfection by Paul Winfield, before stopping along the way to visit their granddaughter and Fiona, the ex-wife of their ne'er-do-well son, Jesse.

It is Maggie's fondest dream to reunite these two - she's convinced they're still in love with each other but each chooses to reveal this fact when the other party is least receptive. Meanwhile, Ira discovers his granddaughter has grown into a likable child.

When Maggie's scheme falls apart, we, along with Ira, aren't particularly surprised and, like Ira, we love Maggie all the more for her incurable optimism.

As the film (and their day) ends, and Maggie and Ira settle into bed with comfortable conversation, viewers too will feel the same comfortable satisfaction from having spent a rewarding time with two believable, likable human beings.

While Garner and Woodward are thoroughly convincing as the Morans, they get great support from other fine performers, some in just the briefest of scenes, such as Henry Jones, marvelous as Ira's grumpy father; Debra Mooney as Fiona's mother and John Considine as one of the funeral's more enthusiastic participants. Also excellent are Kathryn Erbe as the dreamy Fiona, Tim Guinee as Jesse and Stephi Linebergas their daughter, Leroy.

To call "Breathing Lessons" adult entertainment is risky because that term has become synonymous with writhing bodies and heavy breathing - which is precisely what "Breathing Lessons" isn't. Yet the characters played by Garner and Woodward, who never exchange much more than a chaste kiss in the film, illustrate far better what love is about than anything else seen recently. Take a bow, Hallmark and CBS!

`Cisco Kid' returns with a flurry on TNT

"Cisco Kid," TNT movie, 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday, TNT (and Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, plus Feb. 13).

First introduced in 0. Henry's short story "The Caballero's Way," the Cisco Kid has had a long and honorable history of innumerable movies (with a variety of actors portraying him), TV series and comic books. Handsome and personable Jimmy Smits is the latest performer to take on the role, which he does with wit and style in this newest, light-hearted, rather tongue-in-cheek version.

Director and co-screenwriter Luis Valdez ("La Bamba," "Zoot Suit") has described his "Cisco Kid" as a "popcorn movie," an apt description.

So if you're in the mood for lots of action and comedy (much of it supplied by Cheech Marin, as Pancho to Smits' Cisco,) put on the popcorn and settle back to be mindlessly amused. For my taste, this new version still looks like a Saturday matinee from the 1940s.

`State of Emergency': It'll capture you

"State of Emergency," "HBO Showcase," 8 p.m. Saturday (and Feb. 15, 21; 24, 27).

With health care the No. 2 topic in the nation these days, this new HBO film, one of several medical programs this week, is about as timely as you can get. It also happens to be a tightly-written, well-acted, fast-paced TV movie.

It's not exactly a breakthrough - it's more like "Ben Casey Meets NYPD Blue," sans the black humor of "St. Elsewhere," with Joe Mantegna playing a doctor who cares in much the same way as Vince Edwards did, or David Caruso performs in "NYPD Blue." But as fans of that series know, that's pretty high praise.

Set in the Emergency Room at a large urban hospital, scripters Susan Black and Lance Gentile have taken the familiar story about the victim of an accident (Paul Dooley) whose life is endangered through a series of incidents at the hospital, and played it out against a backdrop that sharply etches the financial dilemmas of modern medicine.

Some of these include: hospital mergers to save costs, emphasis upon expensive technology, overworked personnel, shortages of basic equipment - and hospital boards trying to balance need for care with fears of malpractice suits. The interaction between the two stories makes "State of Emergency" an attention-holding film.

Lesli Linka Glatter's direction gets fine performances from Mantegna, Lynn Whitfield as another doctor, and Melinda Dillon as Dooley's wife, as well as many character actors in smaller roles.

"State of Emergency" is an exceptionally well-done movie.

Dreary `Babymaker' has wrong focus

"The Babymaker: The Cecil Jacobson Story," "CBS Tuesday Movie," 9 p.m. Tuesday, Channel 7.

That term, "Based on an actual incident," preceding any TV movie, has become a phrase to strike terror in the viewer's heart - and this new CBS medical movie is a perfect example.

It tells us less than we want to know about the East Coast doctor recently indicted for inseminating his patients, mostly would-be mothers having trouble conceiving, with his own sperm, a case very big with tabloid TV "news shows" a few years ago.

Here's a case where a documentary would have been much more interesting than a docudrama. For instead of letting us learn more about this egotistical man, in "Babymaker" he's reduced pretty much to a cipher (despite George Dzundza's performance) in order to focus on a dreary couple, played by Melissa Gilbert and Tom Verica.

The two bicker endlessly about not having a baby, about whether they should try artificial insemination, about how wonderful the baby is until they find out Jacobson is the biological father, as well as quarreling among themselves. The film keeps telling us about them - a tiresome duo if there ever was one! - when what we want to know is what made Dr. Jacobson behave as he did. We never find out.