`Where Are My Children?' Leaves You Asking Questions

"Where are My Children?" "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KOMO-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Another season, another batch of TV movies "inspired by an actual event" - such as ABC's "Where Are My Children?," and starring Marg Helgenberger as Vanessa Myer, a young mother whose three children disappear under mysterious circumstances.

Let's begin by saying Helgenberger is a likable performer - but she doesn't get much help here from Michael Zager's skim-the-surface screenplay.

Helgenberger portrays Vanessa Myer and when we meet her, in 1962 in a Navy town in Georgia, she's working two jobs to support her three children - a baby, a boy, 5, and a girl, 6 - and recuperating from a failed marriage (about which we never learn anything). A great deal of time is spent to convince us Vanessa's children are the most important thing in her life.

Suddenly, FBI agents arrive in town, charging Vanessa with having hitched a ride on a government plane, which she doesn't deny. A judge decides to make an example of her and sentences her to three months in jail. (It's never explained how the FBI learned of her indiscretion, nor is it noted whether the military was punished for its part in the action.)

But when Vanessa gets out of jail, her three children are missing, the baby sitter doesn't know what happened to them, almost no one remembers them - and thugs threaten Vanessa, telling her to leave town in two days. Her lawyer, played by Jerry Hardin, doesn't seem to be much help - and a snippy judge, played by Bonnie Bartlett, behaves suspiciously.

What's behind all of this? Was the judge a part of one of those adoption rings that steal babies and sells them to well-heeled couples? (We've already had a couple of TV movies about that.) At any rate, as the movie limps along, Vanessa's investigations never result in any concrete information about the whereabouts of children and her life continues for the next two decades on a rather unhappy road, which includes another failed marriage, another child and a move to California where she finally meets Mr. Right. But even there, unhappiness dogs her tracks and it's only after a TV reporter gets interested in her story and does her own investigation that Vanessa finally gets to see her children again. They are, by this time, in their 20s but, according to the information at the end of the film, they're all living happily ever after at this point.

While Helgenberger manages to engage our concern because she's a good actress (even though she never ages a bit during the 20 years in which the story unfolds), the movie never makes clear what actually happened to her three children and why it happened - which is, after all, what the movie is supposed to be about.

Also giving a good performance is Christopher Noth of "Law & Order" who plays a nice guy who inexplicably turns nasty - another big hole in the script. "Where Are My Children?," mostly a downer, is also frustrating because it never tells us what we want to know - a mystery without any explanation.

Hospital drama

"Chicago Hope," CBS series, 8 p.m. Sunday; 10 p.m. Thursday, KIRO-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This is one of two new medical series - both set in Chicago, both airing regularly at 10 p.m. Thursdays - and is the creation of David E. Kelley, who produced "L.A. Law" for several seasons and created "Picket Fences" (and wrote numerous scripts for both).

Medical dramas have been around since the beginning of TV, with two of the best-known being ABC's "Ben Casey," starring Vince Edwards, and NBC's "Dr. Kildare" (which came to TV via the movies), starring Richard Chamberlain, in which the doctors were heros and the center of the drama. (The same was true of "Marcus Welby, M.D."). The most recent popular medical series was NBC's "St. Elsewhere" in which the doctors were all too fallible and human and the focus was on as many aspects of the workings of a major hospital as possible.

With "Chicago Hope," Kelley has returned the focus to the doctors and it appears he's tried to combine Casey and Kildare: gentle Dr. Aaron Shutt, played by Adam Arkin, is the epitome of the caring, solicitous doctor, very much in the Kildare mode, while Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, a heart surgeon played by Mandy Patinkin, is blunt, often abrasive, reminiscent of Casey.

(The two leads get fine support from Hector Elizondo as Dr. Watters, head of surgery, and Roxanne Hart as the chief surgical nurse - who also happens to be Dr. Shutt's estranged wife. Veteran actor E.G. Marshall adds another perspective in the role of the hospital's most renowned surgeon, now past his prime but unwilling to retire. Peter MacNicol plays the hospital's counsel, always raising objections, Cassandra-like, to whatever the surgeons want to do.)

The most interesting piece of casting is Patinkin, whose chief credits are Broadway - a Tony Award for his performace in "Evita," a Tony nomination for his starring role in "Sunday in the Park with George" and appearances in "The Secret Garden" and "Falsettos." His films have ranged from "Yentl" and "Dick Tracy" to "The Princess Bride" and "Ragtime." He has a second career as a concert performer and recording artist.

As the larger-than-life, almost over-the-edge Geiger, the role seems tailor-made for Pantinkin's dynamic performance style. Viewers will either love or hate him - but he's too much of a dominant personality to ignore - and he may become the reason viewers tune in "Chicago Hope."

Kelley is also fascinated with the high-tech aspects of modern medicine, and the two first episodes this week, reflect that. In tonight's presentation, a team of doctors deals with the separation of Siamese twins. In Thursday's episode, Shutt does a delicate brain tumor operation while Geiger experiments with an artificial heart. In all cases, a great deal of detail on the procedures is included so the series should definitely appeal to medical junkies.

The rest of us may notice that there never seems to be much discussion about costs to the patient. Obviously everyone who comes to "Chicago Hope" has great medical insurance.

Waste of time ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The Haunting of Sea Cliff Inn," 9 p.m. Thursday, USA Network. "Justice in a Small Town," NBC movie, 9 p.m. Friday, KING-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

If you're looking for this week's quota of potboilers, here they are: "The Haunting of a Sea Cliff Inn," stars Ally Sheedy and William Moses, two of the less scintillating performers around, in an idiotic tale of a haunted house. Walter Klenhard, who directed, knows how to create eerie, spooky scenes, but Walter Klenhard, who wrote the script, knows nothing about writing scripts that make any sense. The Mendocino, Calif., location is lovely, however.

"Justice in a Small Town," another "fact-based" drama, stars Kate Jackson and John Shea, not exactly top ranking stars, either. It concerns corruption in Georgia state government, and while it may have been a big deal in Georgia, it seems familiar stuff in the movie.

Best performances are by Dean Stockwell, fast becoming the perfect choice to play villains, and Megan Gallagher, as an oversexed Southern belle, who ends every sentence with "Sugah" as in, when making a comment to someone she believes has rifled her desk: "The next time you want to get into my drawers, Sugah, all you have to do is ask."

NBC is airing this movie to replace a baseball game that probably isn't going to take place. Sort of makes you wish the strike would hurry up and end.