Robert Conrad has the leading role in...

Robert Conrad has the leading role in “Assassin,” playing an undercover agent who must track down a robot that has been programmed to kill one of his bosses and a group of politicians. Also starring in the TV movie for CBS are Karen Austin, Richard Young, Robert Webber and Jonathan Banks.

Chris Wallace, chief White House correspondent for NBC News, will begin anchoring the Sunday-night edition of “NBC Nightly News” in February. He has done that job before, from September, 1982 to January, 1984. Since then the anchor slot had been filled by John Palmer. Palmer will continue to anchor the news on the “Today” show.

Olivia de Havilland is returning to the Civil War. The actress, who played Melanie Hamilton in “Gone With the Wind,” has joined the cast of “North and South, Book II,” to be telecast later this season. She’ll play a hospital nurse in the ABC miniseries.

Liza Minnelli plans to tape another special for Home Box Office. She did one before in 1980. This one will tape in March at the London Palladium with what the pay-cable network says will be “an all-new stage act created by Minnelli and collaborator Fred Ebb expressly for the special.”

Sam Elliott will be the good guy and Robert Culp the bad guy in “The Blue Lightning,” a TV movie being filmed in Australia for CBS. Elliott portrays a San Francisco detective who travels Down Under to confront the terrorist played by Culp.