TV REVIEWS : A WEALTH OF QUALITY DRAMA TONIGHT

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, even with a videocassette recorder, one cannot harvest all the riches that television spews forth in a given evening. Tonight is such an occasion.

There are first-rate dramas on ABC and PBS, “Johnny Bull” and “Painting Churches,” the conclusion of the sometimes exciting miniseries “On Wings of Eagles” on NBC, and an uncut presentation of the Academy Award-winning film “On Golden Pond” on KTLA Channel 5. There is also a new TV movie on CBS, “Samaritan,” about the plight of the homeless.

The problem: All of them overlap at one time or another between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Good luck.

‘PAINTING CHURCHES’

The Churches in the title of this “American Playhouse” production are Gardner and Fanny, a distinguished Boston couple whose only daughter, Mags, has returned home from New York to paint their portrait.

But Mags, like many children, has a tendency to see her parents as churches--institutions whose construction flaws and signs of aging are easily overlooked out of respect and admiration for what they represent.

Her inability, or refusal, to acknowledge her father’s early stages of senility forms the basis for what is actually--the theme notwithstanding--a warm, frequently humorous drama, which airs at 8 tonight on Channel 50 and at 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15.

“Painting Churches” grabs you in two ways. First, there are the knockout performances by Sada Thompson and Donald Moffat as the elderly parents whose descent into the problems of old age has not robbed them of their ability to enjoy each other’s company.

Then there is the captivating rhythm established by writer Tina Howe and director Jack O’Brien, who skillfully wend their way in and out of various moods without signaling where they’re going next.

As Mags, Roxanne Hart is not as dynamic as Thompson and Moffat, but neither is the character as well-defined by Howe. Mags clearly had a painful childhood and is still paying for it as an adult, but strangely she seems to bear her parents no resentment, even when they regard her more as an entertainer than a loved one.

Where that leaves her at the end of the play is disappointingly unclear. Yet “Painting Churches,” produced at KCET by Ricki Franklin, will leave you feeling good anyway with its resonant portrait of a weathered but ever-durable marriage.