Weekend TV : Networks Offer Films to Tear You Away From Those Not-So-New Gifts

Just when you’re probably a little weary of playing with your new Christmas toys, the networks have seemingly banded together Sunday at 9 p.m. to belatedly bestow competing Christmas presents designed to suit your post-holiday mood.

CBS offers a new TV movie, drawn from a Barbara Cartland romance, called “A Hazard of Hearts.” Helena Bonham Carter of “A Room With a View” fame stars as a young Englishwoman who becomes involved with a mysterious marquis and his mother during the early 1800s.

NBC counters with the tragicomic, Academy Award-winning drama “Terms of Endearment,” starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger and Jack Nicholson. James Brooks, director of the current movie, “Broadcast News,” won an Oscar for his adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel about a mother, daughter and the astronaut next door.

ABC woos audiences with the 1980 comedy “Stir Crazy.” Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder dress up as big birds for a bank publicity stunt, then wind up in the slammer when two other guys dressed as birds rob the same bank.

And if that’s not enough, the Z cable channel is ready with another Academy Award-winning blockbuster, “Ordinary People,” starring Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, also coming along Sunday at 9 p.m.

Tonight, Lou Rawls hosts his annual “Parade of Stars” telethon for the United Negro College Fund starting at 6 p.m. on Channel 13. His guests include Whitney Houston, Sammy Davis Jr., Smokey Robinson and Ben Vereen.