`Visitors Of The Night' Is Certainly No `X-Files'

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Visitors of the Night," "NBC Monday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KING-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- It turns out that imitating "The X-Files" is more difficult than anyone at NBC thought it would be: "Visitors of the Night" is complete with alien abductions, whirling lights, odd behavior, unexplained phenomena, just like "The X-Files," but it comes to naught.

Part of the problem with this TV movie is that writer Michael Murray failed to make his two leading characters - a mother and daughter, played by Markie Post and Candace Cameron - either interesting or sympathetic. Mostly they yell at and quarrel with each other so that much of film seems like any other movie about domestic squabbling in a dysfunctional family.

There are lots of special effects supposed to frighten and intrigue, but the characters Post and Cameron play are so monotonously one-note that my only reaction at the finale was: Good riddance!

The other part of the problem with "Visitors of the Night" is one previously encountered by "The X-Files." One-hour dramas are more convincing and easier to sustain than two-hour episodes.

One-hour segments of "The X-Files" are over before you've had time to question the logic or sense of what you're seeing. Two-hour stories usually contain padding - and it's during those lulls that you start realizing there are holes in the script big enough to accommodate a 747. "Visitors of the Night" is loaded with such lulls.

Pilot in offing? ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Family of Cops," "CBS Sunday Movie," 9 p.m., KSTW-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This TV movie smells suspiciously like a pilot for a series. Charles Bronson plays a widowed police veteran with two sons on the force, a daughter who is a public defender and another daughter who, at the end of the film, is thinking about becoming a policewoman.

It's set in Milwaukee and for too long the movie dithers over Bronson's birthday party - will his youngest daughter, a sexy rebel (played by Angela Featherstone) come home for the event?

Eventually the story (written by Joel Blasberg) gets around to a murder, of which the youngest daughter is accused. The family goes into action! She's acquitted. Surprise! Surprise! Director Ted Kotcheff tries to whip up energy with some well-staged shootouts, but this is a tired piot.

Predictable but . . . ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The Silver Strand," 8 p.m. Sunday, Showtime. -----------------------------------------------------------------

But for predictability, it's hard to beat this new TV movie, written by Douglas Stewart and directed by George T. Miller.

Filmed in Australia purporting to be an American base where Navy Seals are trained, "The Silver Strand" plays like a service film from World War II. Nicollette Sheridan plays the Seals' commander's wife but the minute she exchanges glances with a hunky recruit (Gil Bellows), you know the drill. Shades of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster!

The best and most believable scenes are the training scenes - not likely to cause anyone to rush out and enlist - and the best performance is given by Tony Plana who puts the recruits through their paces. He's every new recruit's worst nightmare.

Good performances ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The Price of Love," "Fox Tuesday Night Movie," 8 p.m., KCPQ-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The best TV movie this week is this downbeat but serious and well-acted look at life on the streets of Los Angeles for teenage runaways. It stars Peter Facinelli as a teen whose stepmother kicks him out of the house. He hitches a ride to L.A. and eventually resorts to prostitution to secure food and shelter. Life takes a turn for the worse after he's busted and eventually has to face the cold facts about where his life is heading.

Ronald Parker's script doesn't glamorize life on the streets, yet treats the prostitution angle with sensitivity, while director David Morris gets affecting performances from an uniformly good cast. Facinelli is believable as the teen in crisis, as are Laurel Holloman as a girl who befriends Facinelli, and Jay Ferguson, Steven Martini and Alexis Cruz as hustlers.

Looking back ----------------------------------------------------------------- "American Experience: Orphan Trains," 9 p.m. Monday, KCTS-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Runaways and homeless children are not a new phenomenon, as is proven by this sobering documentary about the founding, in the 1850s, of an organization to relocate New York's homeless children on the farms and in the small towns elsewhere in the country. (It was also the subject of a notable TV movie in 1979.)

The film uses memorable photographs (many of which show conditions for the homeless even worse than today), diaries, news reports and first-person testimony by adults who recall their own experiences or those of their relatives.

Early-day heroes ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Idols of the Game," 5:05, 7:05 p.m. Monday, TBS. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This ambitious three-part, six-hour look at sports in the 20th century zeros in on several of the idols of various sports, assessing their talents and relating them and their sports to the tenor of the times.

The first episode focuses on Jim Thorpe, Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Arnold Palmer and Muhammad Ali. New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte wrote the series and does an excellent job of combining history and sports, in much the same way as that thoughtful HBO documentary, "Fields of Fire: Sports in the '60s" (repeated Sunday night at midnight and 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday).

This first episode of "Idols of the Game" is "Inventing the All-American." Tuesday night's is "Babes in Boyland"; the series ends Thursday night with "Love and Money."

Memorable scenes ----------------------------------------------------------------- "National Geographic: Cyclone!," 8 p.m. Wednesday, KING-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This often-mesmerizing documentary offers a great deal of information about various weather services and the tracking of violent weather systems but what you'll probably remember most are those scenes shot during terrible events like Hurricane Andrew.

There's a shot of a roof blowing away, shown even before the credits, that you won't soon forget. Another shows a camera crew trying to outrace a cyclone. The devastation scenes after such an event are always heart-breaking. The scenes shot during the disturbances are practically heart-stopping.

Different perspective ----------------------------------------------------------------- "New Paradigms: Robert MacNeil," 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Channel 29. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Robert MacNeil is such a familiar face and persona from PBS' "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" that it's something of a revelation to see him in another situation - as an author and on the other end of an interview.

It turns out the man is an out-and-out romantic and a man in love with language and writing. Laine Pomeroy asks him stimulating questions and it's a half-hour no fan of MacNeil's more prominent "other" side will want to miss.

Lebsock gets A ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Upon Reflection: Suzanne Lebsock," 12:30 p.m. Sunday, KCTS-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Marcia Alvar interviews historian-author and winner of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Suzanne Lebsock Sunday, and the two engage in an interesting conversation about history, women's roles - and women's roles in history.

Lebsock is the wife of Richard McCormick, the new president of the UW who was interviewed three weeks ago. Her interview gets an A, his a B-.