`Unforgivable' A Well-Done Look At Domestic Violence

The topic of physical abuse is no stranger to TV's docudramas, but seldom has it been handled as well as in CBS' "Unforgivable," which was originally scheduled for 9 p.m. tomorrow on KSTW-TV.

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until 12:05 a.m. next Monday to see it. The station is airing a Seattle SuperSonics-Sacramento Kings National Basketball Association playoff game from 7:30 until 10 p.m.

It's a true story - which is easy to accept when one considers the statistics relating to battered women - but the real shocker comes at the end of the movie when a final credit tells us what has happened to the husband and wife, portrayed in the movie by John Ritter and Harley Jane Kozak, since the husband got some help and turned his life around. It's a hopeful and upbeat ending.

The movie is helped immeasurably by casting John Ritter against type - usually so lovable and easygoing, his characterization of Paul Hegstrom as a keg of dynamite just waiting to explode is first-rate - he's tense, jumpy, conniving, manipulative. The least thing can set him off, and Kozak, as his wife, Judy, quickly earns our sympathy as she tiptoes through life trying to clear obstacles from Paul's path.

But Paul craves confrontation as an excuse to release his tensions - and the movie, under Graeme Campbell's knowing direction, keeps building until Paul Hegstrom finds himself in real trouble.

But "Unforgivable" is more than just an excuse to show violence; it also details Judy Hegstrom's struggle to learn to be an independent woman of worth beyond the role of wife, and Paul has to work hard at understanding himself. Yet "Unforgivable" never lets you believe there are simple and easy solutions to the complex problems it presents. That's why the information it discloses at the end is so welcome.

Hitting the trail

"In Search of the Oregon Trail," a joint venture between Nebraska and Oregon's Public Broadcasting that KCTS-TV airs at 8 tonight on KCTS-TV, is an attempt to counter all those myths about the covered wagons going West with intrepid pioneers fighting off dastardly Indians, the sort of myths that have been compounded by hundreds of movies since "The Covered Wagon" in 1923.

This three-hour film is done in the new style of historical documentary, which includes original diaries and reports - read by actors - and old photographs, films, drawings and paintings, interspersed with comments from historians. And it continues to work, although "In Search of the Oregon Trail" would be more welcome if PBS hadn't already shown a similar major film by Ric Burns last season.

Still, the fine old photographs as well as the stunning contemporary photography of the country through which the Oregon Trail passed make this one worth watching. So does the excellent assessment of the past by historian Richard White of the University of Washington, as well as the emphasis upon the wrongs done to Native Americans by settlers eager to take over the land.

Video notes

Today is the launch of the new cable system, Nick at Nite's TV Land, which will exclusively show old series, and "Nick at Nite" will show a sample of the programming, from "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "That Girl" to "Mannix" and "Hogan's Heroes," tonight fron 8 to 5 a.m. tomorrow . . . No actor has more fun (or is more versatile) than Michael McKean, who used to be dopey Lenny on "Laverne & Shirley" and now can go from the randy publisher on "Dream On" to the scary clown he plays in an especially intriguing episode of UPN's "Star Trek: Voyager" at 8 tonight on KIRO-TV . . . "Procedure 769: Witnesses to an Execution," the documentary Cinemax shows at 6:05 a.m. tomorrow, is very much in the same vein as the recent "Frontline" on capital punishment . . . Harriet Sansom-Harris, who consistently stole scenes in CBS' "The Five Mrs. Buchanans," was previously seen as Frasier's cutthroat agent, a role to which she triumphantly returns in a wild episode of NBC's "Frasier' at 9 p.m. tomorrow on KING-TV . . . . AMC will repeat that informative documentary, "Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial," at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday . . . As part of the 2Oth-anniversary celebration of PBS' "Live from Lincoln Center," the "Pavarotti Plus!" concert airing at 8 p.m. Wednesday and 12:30 a.m. Thursday on KCTS-TV will have a special intermission feature on the series itself . . . Whitley Strieber, whose comments on aliens and a whole universe of other topics are startling, provocative and sometimes bizarre, is the guest on "New Paradigms' at 3 p.m. Thursday on Channel 29.