“DECEPTIONS,” 9-11 p.m. Sunday and Monday (4)...

“DECEPTIONS,” 9-11 p.m. Sunday and Monday (4) (36) (39)--Stephanie and Sabrina (both played by Stefanie Powers) are identical twins who lead vastly different lives. Stephanie lives a subdued, secure life in a Midwestern college town, while Sabrina is a London jet-setter.

They decide to switch identities, resulting in complications, confusion and murder. Uh oh.

Based on a novel by Judith Michael, the unpreviewed “Deceptions” sounds like a violent version of the movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” in which two women with radically different life styles exchange roles.

Actually, “Desperately Seeking Ratings” is more like it. Concluding its most successful season in years, NBC is deploying this passionate two-parter at the end of a May ratings sweeps period that overall has been sadly lacking in quality multipart dramas.

So “Deceptions” is celebrated here because it marks the end of the current run of miniseries (some of them very “mini”), which have ranged from the ponderous “Christopher Columbus” on CBS to the absurd “Lace II” on ABC.

ABC’s suspenseful “Death in California,” a bizarre and chilling true tale in which Sam Elliott confirmed his standing as TV’s foremost villain, was probably the best of a largely undistinguished May miniseries class.

This not been a season for network miniseries in general, moreover. In the blockbuster category, “Robert Kennedy and His Times” on CBS had its moments, thanks to Brad Davis in the lead role, but too few of them. NBC’s “A.D.” was handsome but slow-moving and uneven, and “Space” on CBS was definitely from another planet.

Meanwhile, CBS also had the honor of presenting a two-part drama--”The Atlanta Child Murders”--whose undocumented subjectivity in regard to recent history resurrected questions about the advisability and validity of so-called docudrama.

Deceptions, indeed.