`Queen Of Mean' -- CBS TV Movie About Helmsley Is Nasty, Wicked - And Fun

Right from the start, when we see her in a pillbox hat with veil, sipping cocktails in a chic Manhattan bar as a ticky-tacky orchestra plays ``Tico Tico,'' you know you're in for fun. The fun is in the form of CBS' first new TV movie of the season, ``Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean,'' airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on KIRO-TV.

It's a wonderfully entertaining movie - of no more intrinsic value than two hours of ``Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'' - but done with such knowing wickedness and acted with such perfection by Suzanne Pleshette in the title role that you can't fail to have a good time. Pleshette is definitely in the running for an Emmy next year for her performance as the pushy, scheming, ambitious, avaricious, insincere Leona Helmsley. There hasn't been as nasty a performance since Joan Crawford played ``Mildred Pierce.''

Helmsley's early life probably is unfamiliar to most of us - it wasn't until her ``Queen of the Palace'' magazine ads and her subsequent tax troubles that she was well-known outside of New York. ``Queen of Mean'' says she had been a character to watch for years previously, and chronicles her financial-based marriages, her mighty striving for upward mobility and her willingness to walk over anyone in the path of her progress.

Pleshette (and scriptwriter Dennis Turner) are not into making us feel sorry for Helmsley - there are a couple of scenes about how she felt her mother never loved her - but mostly they're content to create an elegant monster, which they do with consummate artistry. There's something fascinating about seeing someone this openly evil at work!

Good work, under Richard Michaels' direction, also is done by Lloyd Bridges as Harry Helmsley; Raymond Singer as Jay, Helmsley's unrealiable son; and a parade of underlings playing ``the little people'' who constantly were treated to examples of the Helmsley imperiousness. Nancy Fox's wardrobe and the period decor help chronicle Leona Helmsley's rise - and fall. Helmsley probably will have a familiar screaming fit over this movie - and with good reason - but most viewers surely will come away believing it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.

It's a big TV movie weekend. Tonight CBS airs ``The World's Oldest Living Bridesmaid,'' a lightweight comedy starring Donna Mills, at 9 on KIRO-TV. She plays a high-powered lawyer who falls in love with her secretary, played by Brian Wimmer. We all know eventually they'll hit the sack and the only suspense is will it or won't it lead to marriage. It's harmless, if familiar, fun.

NBC is countering with ``Murder C.O.D.'' at 9 tonight on KING-TV, a run-of-the-mill thriller about a looney killer, filmed in Portland (which looks good) and starring Patrick Duffy as a police commander with a secret. All the acting honors go to William Devane, who chews up the scenery with gusto as a killer who likes to remove someone's enemy - and then send a bill for doing it.

Sunday night, NBC will be countering ``Queen of Mean'' with ``She Said No,'' at 9 on KING-TV. It's a well-done drama about a rape victim (Veronica Hamel) who decides to prosecute her attacker (Judd Hirsch), which backfires because he happens to be a savvy lawyer who knows how to make the law work for him. Lee Grant is a strong asset as a prosecutor and Hirsch has fun playing a weasel - but ``She Said No'' can't begin to compare with ``Queen of Mean.''

New one: At 8 tonight on KIRO-TV, CBS premieres what it hopes will be one of its big successes this season - ``Evening Shade.'' It's produced by Linda Bloodworth Thomason and Harry Thomason, who have turned ``Designing Women'' into one of CBS' hits, along with Burt Reynolds, who also stars.

Like ``Designing Women,'' ``Evening Shade'' is set in the South (Arkansas) and takes its cue from ``Our Town.'' In the premiere hour we meet many of the citizens of Evening Shade. They provide a cross-section of characters (and acting) - from Hal Holbrook's common-sense newspaper editor to Elizabeth Ashley's ``Suth'n'' belle; from Marilu Henner's ``new'' Southern woman to Reynold's easygoing high school football coach (and Henner's husband); and from Charles Durning's corn-pone doctor to Ossie Davis' role as a restaurant owner and observer, much like the Stage Manager in ``Our Town.''

The opening episode follows these characters as their lives intertwine in a typical day in Evening Shade - and that may be too much freight for this slender hour to carry. It would have been wiser to introduce these folks a few at a time, rather than all at once.

The performances are wildly ragged - everyone seems to have been encouraged to be a ``character'' - except for Reynolds, who underplays to the point where laid back might be confused with lackluster.

Holbrook not surprisingly steals every scene in which he appears, while Durning reprises ``Big Daddy'' and Henner seems more an ambitious Northerner than a gracious Southerner. Ashley makes up for it - she's so laden with accents and phrases peculiar to the area you sometimes long for subtitles.

Somewhere inside all this fuss and feathers, I think there's the germ of a really engaging weekly series composed of equal parts drama and comedy. But it definitely needs work.

Video notes: ABC's ``Full House'' begins its fourth season at 8 tonight on KOMO-TV. . . . ABC's ``Family Matters'' begins its second season with an hour-long special at 8:30 tonight on KOMO-TV. . . . KCTS-TV's ``Inside'' begins its third season at 9:30 tonight with an interview with a Northwest woman just back from Kuwait, where she and her children went to join her husband - just six hours before the Iraqi invasion Aug. 2. . . . While Yue-sai Kan's four-part series, ``Doing Business in Asia,'' which premieres at 9 tonight on KCTS-TV, is designed primarily for Americans planning to do business in Asia, this first episode, about Japan, has fascinating information for all viewers. . . . USA Network has ordered 20 new episodes of the suspense anthology ``The Hitchhiker,'' the first of which airs at 10 tonight on cable, stars Nick Mancuso - and isn't particularly good. . . . ``Going Up,'' a film by Gary Pollard that is a time-lapse look at the erection of a New York City skyscraper, airs on PBS' ``P.O.V.'' at 10 tonight on KCTS-TV.