Directed by Mike Nichols and written by...

Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, Silkwood (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) is deeply disturbing as a depiction of the men and women working the potentially deadly front line of the nuclear industry. It’s less satisfying in its telling of the story of Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee Plant near Crescent, Okla., who died on a night in 1974 when her car veered off a lonely highway and hit a concrete culvert. What made her death a cause celebre was that she just happened to be on her way to meet a New York Times reporter with information about what she believed was a cover-up of faulty welds in the plant’s plutonium fuel rods. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t render Silkwood’s life with enough humanity to leave us feeling bereft, and what’s more, Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Silkwood as a reckless blue-collar tease who’s pulled almost accidentally into activism is actressy; the film’s dynamite performance is Cher’s touching and funny portrayal of Karen’s longing, lonely roommate.

The new two-part Roses Are for the Rich (CBS Sunday and Tuesday at 9 p.m.) stars Lisa Hartman as a woman whose vendetta against the man she believes killed her husband culminates in her trial for the man’s murder. Bruce Dern, Joe Penny, Betty Buckley and Morgan Stevens co-star.

Title tells all: The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.) stars Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner--who else?

Mike the Dog, the irresistible pooch of “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” makes his TV movie debut as a canine criminal who tries to go straight in Spot Marks the X, “The Disney Sunday Movie” airing at 7 p.m. Sunday on ABC.

Kurt Russell is fine in “Silkwood” as Karen’s boyfriend who becomes fed up with her new-found activism, and is even better in The Mean Season (Channel 13 Monday at 8 p.m. and again on Saturday at 10 p.m.), playing a Miami reporter who confronts himself in the pursuit of a serial killer. The Mean Season makes deft use of the thriller form to examine the relationship between those who report the news and those who make it, and how that line can blur dangerously. But why is it that in the movies the loved ones of homicidal maniacs are invariably left unprotected?

Sleepy-eyed, sexy and vulnerable, Nicolas Cage made a terrific film debut in Martha Coolidge’s sweet, fast, unpretentious, funny and even touching Valley Girl (Channel 5 Monday at 8 p.m.) as a working-class Hollywood High Romeo who falls for nice, decent and affluent Juliet (Deborah Foreman, in the title role). Neat twist: Foreman’s parents, time-warp hippies (Frederic Forrest and Colleen Camp) seem younger than their daughter.

Victor Nunez’s film of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Gal Young ‘Un (Channel 28 Monday at 9 p.m.) is a work of endearingly modest perfection. It’s set in the lush Florida backwoods of the ‘20s (or early ‘30s) where a widow (Dana Preu) has her mettle tested when she faces the fact that she’s fallen for a glib con man (David Peck).

Airing Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC is the new TV movie Six Against the Rock, based on the true story of six convicts who in 1946 attempted a daring escape from Alcatraz. David Carradine, Howard Hesseman, David Morse, Charles Haid, Jan-Michael Vincent, Richard Dysart, Dennis Farina and Paul Sanchez star.

On Golden Pond (Channel 5 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) expresses eloquently a dream that many of us share: to grow old, but never less passionate, alongside the person one has loved most dearly. The dream couple is played by Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, but their comfortable situation proves no defense against the frights and confusions of old age. Another key element: an unresolved relationship between the husband and his daughter, played by Jane Fonda.

Jane Fonda also stars--along with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton--in that funny but scarcely subtle feminist office comedy, 9 to 5 (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.).

The problem with The Falcon and the Snowman (Channel 13 Wednesday at 8 p.m.), based on a true story of a couple of South Bay guys who sell government secrets to the Russians, is that we never get to understand fully the motivation of the leader of the two, played by Timothy Hutton. Nevertheless, Sean Penn is sensational as his frenzied, out-of-control friend.

Revenge of the Nerds (Channel 11 at 9 p.m. Wednesday and again on Saturday) is a delicious, gratifying underdog fantasy and a raunchy, uproarious satire set in the often cruel and inherently discriminating world of college fraternities and sororities. Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards are the nerds, off to college with boundless naivete, terrible haircuts, ugly glasses and too many pens and pencils bulging the pockets of their short-sleeved shirts.

Brian De Palma’s The Fury (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is an exciting triumph of style over substance, involving a super-secret government intelligence agency, a man (Kirk Douglas) determined to locate his missing son (Andrew Stevens) and a girl (Amy Irving) with extraordinary psychic powers.

Elizabeth Taylor stars as Poker Alice (CBS Friday at 9 p.m.), a lighthearted Western in which she plays a Bible-reading lady stranded--but scarcely without resources--in New Mexico. Tom Skerritt and George Hamilton co-star.

In Self Defense (ABC Friday at 9 p.m.), another new TV movie, finds Linda Purl playing a murder witness whose decision to testify plunges her into danger when the killer goes free on insufficient evidence.

Gene Wilder stars in both Silver Streak (Channel 5 Friday at 7:30 p.m.) and The Woman in Red (Channel 13 Friday at 8 p.m.), but if you’re in the mood for Wilder, go with Silver Streak.

In the award-winning 1983 TV movie Memorial Day (CBS Saturday at 9 p.m.) Mike Farrell stars as a Vietnam veteran whose reunion with some old combat buddies triggers a flood of memories he has struggled to forget. This finely fashioned morality play makes the point that “the whole damn thing was so damn stupid”--and bears down as much on those who didn’t go to war as those who did.

Deliverance (Channel 13 Saturday at 8 p.m.), that rich, energetic and ominous parable about manhood, stars Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox as four friends who ride their frail canoes down the wicked waters of the Chattahoochee in the rugged mountains of Georgia.

Selected evening cable fare: Mikey and Nicky (Bravo Sunday at 8); Desert Bloom (HBO Sunday at 8 and Wednesday at 9:30); Ginger and Fred (SelecTV Monday at 7); Another Country (Bravo Monday at 9); To Live and Die in L.A. (Z Monday at 9); Sweet Dreams (Cinemax Tuesday at 8); 48 HRS. (Movie Channel Tuesday at 9); The White Sheik (Bravo Wednesday at 7); Boudu Saved from Drowning (Z Wednesday at 7); White Dog (Lifetime Wednesday at 8); La Strada (Bravo Wednesday at 8:30); Brazil (Z Wednesday at 9); The Gig (Z Friday at 9); Dog Day Afternoon (WGN Friday at 9:30); Year of the Dragon (Showtime and Z Saturday at 9).