WEEKEND TV : 2 BOMBS--SO MUCH FOR TRACK RECORDS

An Academy Award-winning director and a Tony Award-winning writer take a whack at television this weekend in movies airing opposite one another and prove they can be just as mundane as many of the medium’s full-time practitioners.

William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director of “The French Connection,” directed and was executive producer of “C.A.T. Squad,” a series pilot screening at 9 p.m. Sunday on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39). Mark Medoff, whose plays include “Children of a Lesser God” and “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” wrote “Apology,” a made-for-cable film also showing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Home Box Office.

Friedkin, whose last film, “To Live and Die in L.A.,” was criticized for employing the high-energy, low-substance style of a music video, is guilty in “C.A.T. Squad” of aping “Miami Vice.” The movie is heavy with mood and attitude, light on characterization and story.

What “C.A.T. Squad” doesn’t have is “Miami Vice’s” glitz, rock score and star. Joe Cortese is no Don Johnson. As the leader of a special government force formed to combat terrorism, the Counter Assault Tactical Squad, Cortese is intense, tough and dedicated, but he lacks the charisma and vulnerability that Johnson uses to make Sonny Crockett sympathetic.

His fellow “C.A.T. Squad” members--Steven W. James, Jack Youngblood, Patricia Charbonneau and Bradley Whitford--are equally undistinguished, though it is also true that writer-producer Gerald Petievich has given them little of interest to do in his drawn-out story of the pursuit of a hit man (intriguingly played by Eddie Velez) systematically assassinating scientists involved in the secret development of a space-based, laser-weapon defense system.

As Friedkin fans might hope, there is a chase scene in the film. Typical of what’s wrong here, it takes place on foot. This “C.A.T.” is a dog.

In “Apology,” Lesley Ann Warren plays a New York conceptual artist whose current project involves setting up a telephone answering machine to record calls from people who want to alleviate their guilt by apologizing anonymously for something they’ve done.

“Sounds real pretentious to me,” her teen-age daughter says.

Smart kid. The film itself, however, is less pretentious than it is tedious, as one of the callers turns out to be a psychotic killer who gets it in his mind to do the artist in. Will she arrange to meet the killer without the police? Will the police get there in time? Will she first find time to have a fling with the brooding detective (Peter Weller) who’s helping her? Yes, yes, yes.

Medoff’s script is that formulaic, suspense is minimal under Robert Bierman’s slack direction, there are several holes in the plot and the characters are flat and not particularly likable. At the end, Warren’s character declares that the experience has taught her that “everything I do as an artist and as a person touches the lives of those around me.”

Her daughter isn’t around for that, but we know what she’d say.