`Nothing Lasts Forever': This Mini Has Character(S)

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Nothing Lasts Forever," CBS miniseries, 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday, KSTW-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CBS would prefer this two-hour, four-part movie be known as "Sidney Sheldon's Nothing Lasts Forever," a la the potboilers churned out (and dramatized) by Judith Krantz and Danielle Steel. Like those two, Sheldon doesn't have anything new to say: He just knows how to organize and repackage familiar plots and characters, and by putting his name with the title means readers (and viewers) know what to expect.

"Nothing Lasts Forever" is an honest title - although there were times when it seemed this opus would put the lie to those words - but it should, more accurately, have been called "Three Women in White."

Veteran scripter Gerald DiPego fashioned his story from Sheldon's novel about three young and beautiful women resident doctors at a San Francisco hospital. At two hours, "Nothing Lasts Forever" could have been a reasonably taut and interesting TV movie. But because it goes on for so long, it often plays like a couple of episodes of "ER" or "Chicago Hope" strung together.

At the beginning there are so many explosive moments with people rushing about shouting "Stat!" and other bits of hospital-ese that it takes a while to get the story of the three doctors in focus.

Quite a trio

Beth, who seems to spend more time in (and out) of little black dresses, drinking champagne, than she does in the operating room is played by Brooke Shields. Vanessa Williams plays Kat, who hides, as they say, "the pain of a secret past" behind a tough facade. Gail O'Grady plays Paige, who is just about perfect - brilliant, caring, dedicated.

In the opening scene, however, Paige is being arrested for murder and then we go into flashback and we never find out what that's all about until the end of Part I. By that time it becomes clear that the chief story line of "Nothing Lasts Forever" is about euthanasia. But by this time, there are so many other story lines going on simultaneously you begin to feel you've accidentally tuned in to a daytime soap.

The men are mostly rats, although several of them eventually turn out to be somewhat better than they seemed at the start, thanks to the influences of the women in their lives. Lloyd Bridges plays a curmudgeonly cancer patient, Chris Noth a womanizing doctor, Gregory Harrison a sleazy hospital administrator, while Gerald McRaney plays a rude and abrasive surgeon who is brilliant but hides a terrible secret. Only Stephen Caffrey, as Paige's boyfriend, is a nice guy throughout the film.

While "Nothing Lasts Forever" is an unabashed potboiler, the three stars, under Jack Bender's direction, give lively performances, bringing enough star quality to their roles to help you overlook the fact they're playing cliches more than characters.

0'Grady is particularly appealing. She's branched out from her small role on "NYPD Blue" in a couple of previous TV movies in which she's played a victim who fights back. But this role allows her to stretch a bit more and there are many scenes in "Nothing Lasts Forever" in which she exhibits the kind of star quality - and the sexy vulnerability - the young Lana Turner had.

Energetic performance

Williams, who has a small role on "Murder One," brings a sense of energy to the role of Kat, and Shields, while required to do little more than be sexy and sullen, does it very well.

Bridges is reliable as always, playing a cantankerous cancer patient, while Harrison is more interesting here as a cheap opportunist in expensive suits than he is as the noble good guy on CBS' "New York News."

Noth, in his first appearance after leaving "Law & Order," is OK, but McRaney's performance is too often over the edge. He's supposed to be stern and fanatical; here he's so hateful you wonder why the interns haven't turned on him.

As for Caffrey, he makes almost no impression at all - but then his character is so blah the actor has nothing with which to work. Caffrey's role also explains why Sheldon gives all of his characters major problems - because without those problems to give the characters some kind of identity, they are ciphers.

Skip this `Massage' ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Full Body Massage," 8 p.m. Sunday, Showtime. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Mimi Rogers and Bryan Brown are second-tier performers who are usually interesting to watch but they play such one-note characters in this new Showtime TV movie that they quickly become tiresome.

Dan Gurskis is the culprit here. He's listed as the writer of this pretentious and dopey script and respected director Nicolas Roeg can do nothing with the material except move the actors around an unattractive set from time to time.

Rogers plays a busy art gallery owner who luxuriates, once a week, in a "full body massage." Brown plays the masseur who arrives as a replacement for the young hunk who ordinarily visits Rogers once a week. The gimmick is that the movie takes place in "real time," i.e., the massage lasts an hour and so does the movie (with occasional time outs for flashbacks when the two characters talk to each other).

Mostly they talk about art and life, and the banality of the script suggests Gurskis may be all of 21. The deep thoughts Rogers and Brown trade are about as insightful as you'd get from a Hallmark card.

There's plenty of Rogers on view but even that's not enough to hold one's interest. Eventually you just want both of them to shut up.

`Alone' is bad movie ----------------------------------------------------------------- "She Fought Alone," "NBC Monday Night Movie," 9 p.m. , KING-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

"She Fought Alone" reminded me of those old Cecil B. DeMille sagas which he always claimed were about the wages of sin. But before the wages came due at the end of the movie, you were treated to up to two hours of scandalous doings.

"She Fought Alone" makes great clucking sounds about how awful it is that teenage girls are often harassed, or worse, by teenage boys suffering from rampant hormones in high school. Sexual harassment is, to be sure, a serious problem, no matter who the victims are, and it has been addressed in numerous other movies and plays.

Here the victim is played by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen who gets raped by one of the school's football stars. When she tries to bring charges, things just get worse until the Feds are brought in. The script by John Leekley also tries to comment on the stifling atmosphere of small towns and the redeeming virtues of true love, and this mulligan stew of a movie goes from bad to silly to worse.

Attracts men

It doesn't help that Thiessen spends the first part of the movie behaving as if she were auditioning for "Showgirls." Small wonder the guys think she's an easy mark.

"No!" should mean "No!" But behavior sends messages, too, and here they're in conflict.

The best performance comes from David Lipper, who portrays the perpetrator with an edgy tension and self-assurance that makes him dangerous. Brian Austin Green portrays his buddy who, along the way, turns into a nice guy (about the time the movie tries to turn itself into "West Side Story.")

NBC plans a public-service announcement after the movie about how to contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network hotline. Such good works do not, however, necessarily excuse such a bad movie.

Adventure treasure ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Jacques-Yves Cousteau: My First 85 Years," 6 p.m. Sunday, 10:05 a.m. Monday and 7:05 a.m. Saturday, TBS. -----------------------------------------------------------------

For all of us who have loved watching Cousteau's films through the years, from the earliest ones that seemed to simply capture the beauties and mysteries of the deep to his later-in-life efforts that helped make us aware of our need to preserve the environment, this two-hour career tribute is a treasure.

Making the journey from the sheer exotic to the vitally practical has been Cousteau's life work and this salute is only a small part of what is owed Cousteau for his long and distinguished career. He is one of the truly great men of the 20th century.