Amazingly, Sergio Leone’s sprawling Once Upon a...

Amazingly, Sergio Leone’s sprawling Once Upon a Time in America (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m., concluding Monday at 9 p.m.), which suffered from a truncated version upon its initial release, is premiering on TV in what appears to be its original near four-hour running time. An almost-five-decade saga of some ghetto-born gangsters, it centers on the undying friendship between Robert De Niro and James Woods from the time they were boys on the Lower East Side in the early ‘20s. Elizabeth McGovern is the girl of De Niro’s dreams while Tuesday Weld, as Woods’ girl, is the quintessential double-dealing dame of every ‘30s gangster movie. A startling vision, brutal but mesmerizingly beautiful, from the film maker who gave us a fresh, mythologized vision of the Old West.

The Go-Between (Channel 9 Sunday at 8 p.m.) is Joseph Losey’s elegant mood piece from the L. P. Hartley story in which a boy becomes a messenger between an aristocratic Julie Christie and farmer Alan Bates.

Sophia Loren stars in the three-hour 1986 TV movie Courage (CBS Sunday at 8 p.m.), the true story of a woman who became an undercover operative for a joint federal-city drug enforcement task force.

Loni Anderson headlines the 1984 TV movie My Mother’s Secret Life (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), a tacky, superficial study of a prostitute.

The highly predictable Oxford Blues (Channel 5 Monday at 8 p.m.) has going for it some good dialogue, some nicely perceived characters and the ancient photogenic settings of Oxford University. Rob Lowe, who’s also photogenic, stars as an obnoxious Yank who cheats his way into Oxford.

Why Me? (ABC Monday at 9 p.m.) is a strong, admirable 1984 TV movie based on the actual experiences of an Air Force nurse whose face is ruined in a head-on collision with a truck.

Brian De Palma’s Sisters (Channel 5 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is one of his wittiest homages to Hitchcock, recalling “Rear Window, “Vertigo” and “Psycho” in particular. In this precisely orchestrated, richly detailed exercise in mounting fear and suspense, tenacious reporter Jennifer Salt glimpses a man being stabbed to death in Margot Kidder’s Staten Island apartment.

The Star Chamber (Channel 11 Tuesday at 9 p.m.), a thriller that exploits as it protests the quality of contemporary justice, takes its title from the special court founded by Henry VII in 1487 that was empowered to hold secret sessions without a jury. The premise of this 1983 Peter Hyams film is that because dangerous criminal suspects may escape conviction on technicalities, nine Los Angeles Superior Court judges have formed a secret Star Chamber to take the law into their own hands. As far-fetched as this notion may seem, Hyams and co-writer Roderick Taylor might have put it over as an allegory for our times had they concentrated more on sustaining credibility than in rabble-rousing.

Written by Vernon Zimmerman and directed by Mark Lester, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is one of those rare films that actually manages to comment upon rather than merely exploit the violence inevitable in a story about two couples, initially and essentially innocent types, who drift into a life of crime. Bobbie Jo (Lynda Carter) is a small-town New Mexico carhop who crosses paths with a quick-draw expert (Marjoe Gortner) who dreams of country-western music stardom.

Based on Kay Boyle’s “Maiden, Maiden,” Fred Zinnemann’s handsome Five Days One Summer (CBS Thursday at 9 p.m.) has fascinating elements: physical adventure, adultery and more than a hint of scandal yet tends to remain as remote and lofty as its Swiss mountain settings. Sean Connery, however, is superb as a tormented Scottish doctor.

Directed by Joseph Ruben and written by Herald Examiner film critic Peter Rainer, the 1977 Joyride (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.) deals seriously--but not without humor--with the relations of four young people (Desi Arnaz Jr., Robert Carradine, Melanie Griffith and Anne Lockhart) who lose their innocence when they go to Alaska to seek their fortunes.

Howard Hawks’ classic The Big Sleep airs on Channel 11 Thursday at 9 p.m., and two of Hitchcock’s finest, Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt air on Channel 13 at 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, respectively.