Weekend TV : ‘Noble House,’ Winter Olympics Coverage Go Head to Head Sunday

The sweeps ratings battle between NBC’s most ballyhooed miniseries of the year and ABC’s biggest programming event since David and Maddie reunited on “Moonlighting” rumbles out of the starting gate this weekend.

“Noble House,” a $20-million, four-part adaptation of James Clavell’s fat novel about a Hong Kong trading house, begins its run Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39, competing with ABC’s omnipresent coverage of the Winter Olympics in Calgary. Pierce Brosnan leads a cast of hundreds in this lavish tale of romance, murder, greed, drug trafficking, fires and mudslides.

Closer to home, teen-agers from the inner city, Valley and the Westside talk candidly on “Teen Times,” a “Changing Family” documentary Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channel 9. “La Bamba” star Lou Diamond Phillips hosts the program that relies on straight talk about suicide, drugs, sex, AIDS, gangs, peer pressure, friendship and fashion to paint a portrait of the joys and pains of adolescence.