The misfired 1980 comedy Wholly Moses (Channel...

The misfired 1980 comedy Wholly Moses (Channel 13 Sunday at 6 p.m.) wastes so many richly talented people it’s enough to make you weep as it slavishly follows the footsteps of the Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” Instead of Brian, born one manger over on Dec. 25, we have Herschel, who floated down the Nile one candle behind Moses and, like Brian, was raised by simple folk. It doesn’t help much that the grown-up Herschel is played by Dudley Moore. James Coco, Richard Pryor, Madeline Kahn, John Ritter and many others are featured--to little avail.

In the 1986 TV movie News at 11 (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) the fictional KRKD-TV’s coverage of a molestation case is so odious--so beyond the norm--that it almost detracts from the valid issues raised by this angry and otherwise bull’s-eye account of media abuse. Those issues--individual privacy, journalistic responsibility and the merging of newscasting and theater--are ongoing topics of concern. Martin Sheen and Peter Riegert star.

Back in 1963, feminist Gloria Steinem caused a sensation when she got a job as a Playboy Bunny and wrote about her experiences, but the 1985 TV movie version A Bunny’s Tale (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) is standard fare. (Maybe the 22-year delay had something to do with it.) Kirstie Alley plays Steinem.

King of the Olympics (Channel 13 Monday at 8 p.m., to be completed the following Monday) stars David Selby as Avery Brundage, the strong-willed Olympic kingpin whose checkered personal life was at odds with his puritanical public views.

The glum 1983 Dempsey (Channel 2 Monday at 9 p.m., concluded Tuesday at 9 p.m.) stars Treat Williams as the Manassa Mauler. M.A.D.D.: The Candy Lightner Story (Channel 7 Monday at 9 p.m.) is a strong 1983 TV movie about the woman who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Mariette Hartley stars.

Joan Churchill and Nicholas Broomfield’s Lily Tomlin: The Film Behind the Show (Channel 28 Monday at 9 p.m.) is entertaining simply because Lily Tomlin is entertaining. But as a film it cancels itself out, unsatisfying as either documentary or concert film. There’s not enough of Tomlin’s dazzling one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” to do it justice, yet the behind-the-scenes stuff is too thin on its own. It is strictly a portrait of an artist preparing and in performance; do not expect to discover the woman behind the performer.

Marathon Man (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is that sleek, violent 1976 thriller about a marathon runner (Dustin Hoffman) who becomes involved in pursuing a former Nazi concentration doctor (Laurence Olivier). (Beware of that stomach-wrencher when Olivier tortures Hoffman with a dentist’s drill.)

The Miracle of Kathy Miller (Channel 7 Tuesday at 9 p.m.), a 1981 “affliction” drama, is one of the best of the genre, a genuinely moving (rather than merely manipulative) depiction of a teen-ager’s determination to overcome the devastating effects of a car accident and compete in a six-mile race. Helen Hunt stars.

Not so impressive is the 1984 Nadia (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) a so-so TV movie biography of Nadia Comaneci (Talia Balsam), the young Romanian gymnast who dazzled the 1976 Olympics. There’s much that’s impressive in Woody Allen’s dead-serious Interiors (Channel 7 Wednesday at 9 p.m.), an elegant study of an unhappy family, yet it betrays a strain in emulating Ingmar Bergman. Maureen Stapleton and the late Geraldine Page are nonetheless outstanding as are others in the 1978 film.

The Eiger Sanction (Channel 2 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a splendid high adventure, done with much wit and style, that finds Clint Eastwood (who also directed) scaling a virtually perpendicular mountain in the Swiss Alps as part of an international team of climbers. One of the climbers is a spy for the “other side” who’s stolen a formula for germ warfare.

In the outstanding 1986 TV movie Child’s Cry (CBS Friday at 9 p.m.) director Gilbert Cates and writers Jonathan B. Rintels Jr. and Norman Strum cleverly employ the framework of a courtroom drama in unraveling a complicated case of apparent child abuse. Lindsay Wagner stars.

Melvin Purvis, G-Man (Channel 5 Saturday at 8 p.m.), which stars Dale Robertson in the title role, is a satisfying 1974 TV movie reworking of the vintage gangster picture, written by John Milius and directed by Dan Curtis.