`Against Their Will' Sheds `Light' On Prison Injustices

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Against Their Will: Women in Prison," "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KOMO-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- You can tell everyone connected with "Against Their Will: Women in Prison," wanted you take this very seriously. How? In all past women-in-prison movies, inmates were clad in short shorts and minimum tops, dress much appreciated by the leering guards, both men and women.

In "Against Their Will," the inmates wear drab and baggy prison gear - and it is only the male guards who are taking advantage of the inmates. It is by such small steps that progress is measured.

The credits for this film. written by Linda Bergman and directed by Karen Arthur, point out it was inspired by an actual event - where have we heard that before? - but it never addresses anything like actual places and times.

So be it. Judith Light plays a woman who has had past problems with the law - embezzlement and credit-card fraud - and when she gets mixed up in shoplifting, a situation for which she is not entirely to blame, the judge sends her back to prison for five years!

When she gets there, she finds things greatly changed and gets the lowdown from her former friend and long-term prisoner, played by Kay Lenz. It seems the warden doesn't really care what goes on as long as the prison seems to be running smoothly, so the guards are throwing their weight around in an alarming fashion that usually involves sex.

A troublemaker

But Light's character is a real whistle-blower and she causes so much trouble that the warden arranges early parole. Once on the outside, she contacts a crusading lawyer, played by Stacy Keach, and they use every means possible to bring about changes in the prison.

Running parallel to this part of the film are problems Light faces with her three children.

Light gives a dynamic performance as the prisoner with a mission and the strength of her performance keeps you from asking why prison guards and officials are unable to shut her up like they do everyone else. Keach gives a low-key, sincere performance and the film tries not to overdo scenes where the guards are coming on to the prisoners, one of whom is played by Giuliana Santini as being unbelievably naive.

It's predictable ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Avalanche," "Fox Tuesday Night Movie," 8 p.m. Tuesday, KCPQ-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Believability is in short supply here, but it still manages to be an energetic little thriller, albeit a predictable one.

It stars Michael Gross as a divorced dad, secluded in an Alaska mountain cabin writing a treatise on something medieval. (You would have thought he would have wanted to be near a library or resource center, but never mind.) During spring break his two children, played by Deanna Milligan and Myles Ferguson, come to visit him.

Action aplenty

But they're not the first people we meet. The film opens in Siberia where a diamond smuggler (David Hasselhoff) is double crossing Russians and escaping with diamonds. Over Alaska, he bails out, an action that results in a plane crash - and an avalanche that almost buries Gross and his children.

Imagine their surprise, when trying to tunnel to the surface, they come across - David Hasselhoff! From then on it's pretty formulaic with Hasselhoff alternating between trying to be charming and coercing Gross and the kids into helping him look for the lost diamonds. But even when you can guess what will happen next in Tim Redman's script, director Paul Shapiro keeps things moving quickly enough to hold your interest.

And the scenes where young Ferguson, having dug out through the avalanche to the vast, white outside world in which there are no familiar landmarks, manage to be scarier than the scenes of the avalanche.

As an efficient little thriller, "Avalanche" does very nicely.

Character aplenty ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Dandelion Dead," "Masterpiece Theatre," 9 p.m. Sunday, KCTS-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Nobody does civilized crime in a country village setting better than the British, as they demonstrate once more in "Dandelion Dead," a London Weekend TV production.

"Dandelion Dead" is based on a true story - and was even filmed in Hay-on-Wyc, a village on the Welsh border that was the setting for the original crime: Did Major Herbert Armstrong, an affable solicitor, use arsenic to murder his nagging wife and the young man who threatened his law practice?

The trial is in next week's episode. In Sunday night's program we meet Armstrong, played by Michael Kitchen. The time is 1921 and Armstrong misses the camaraderie of World War I when he had a rather cushy job, lived well and had an affair with an attractive widow. Now he's back home with his imperious, quixotic, nagging wife, played to perfection by Sarah Miles. She's cross because she believes her husband is squandering her fortune - and thinks too much about sex.

One of Armstrong's competitors takes on a new young assistant, Oswald Martin, played by David Thewlis of "Naked." Martin was injured in the war and is still embittered about it. He thinks Armstrong is an odd duck, an opinion encouraged by Connie Davies (Lesley Sharp), the pharmacist's daughter who sets out to marry Martin - who never knows what hit him.

As written by Michael Chaplin and directed by Mike Hodges, "Dandelion Dead" is a delicious portrait of small-town life in a place and time that now seems a long, long time ago but which have been perfectly re-created here in the best "Masterpiece Theatre" tradition.

Ostensibly Armstrong buys arsenic to get rid of his dandelions but he also slips it into his wife's cocoa. Will he be found out? Will he get off? Tune in next week to find out - as a welcome change from O.J., if for no other reason.

Take time for this ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Running Out of Time," 9 p.m. Monday, KCTS-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

"Time on My Hands" is a song that evidently could not have been written in our time, according to overwhelming evidence offered in John de Graaf and Vivia Boe's documentary, "Running Out of Time," a co-production between KCTS-TV and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Hosted by Scott Simon of National Public Radio, "Running Out of Time" offers a wealth of statistics that point out we're spending too much time working and not enough time smelling the roses. Americans feel stressed out, don't pay enough attention to relationships or their children, don't take care of their health - and all for what?

"Running Out of Time" jumps about a great deal as it offers a mini-history of labor unions in the United States; looks at work patterns in other countries, especially Germany and Japan, and interviews a vast array of individuals, none of whom seems to have enough time.

It's all rather scary - this may be the perfect film to run on Halloween! - and if you feel rather breathless by the time this speedy, zippy documentary has run its course, maybe you'll at least take the time to ponder what's important in your own life. De Graaf and Boe would certainly caution you to find the time for that.