Here Come the Judds, Loving and Fighting and Singing . . .

Wynonna Judd was looking daggers at her mother, Naomi, across the lunch table the other day.

“Ain’t she sweet?” drawled Naomi, who sings with her daughter in the Judds, country music’s best duo.

Uncomfortable with the doting, Wynonna said: “I love my momma but sometimes . . . she’s just like a mamma.”

“Sure I’m like any mamma,” countered Naomi. “And we’re just ordinary, plain girls.”

The Judds, who are starring in their first network special, “Across the Heartland” at 10 tonight (Channels 2 and 8), are about as ordinary as Cher, as plain as Diana Ross.

A former model, Naomi is a knockout redhead who, at 44, looks at least 10 years younger. She’s a sophisticated Southern belle, oozing that honeysuckle charm. When it comes to beauty and glamour, daughter takes a back seat to mother. Though affable and chatty, Wynonna, 24, is a more business-like and isn’t quite the charmer her mother is.

Wynonna, though, is the real talent in the duo. While somewhat overshadowed by her mother offstage, she dominates in concert. Arguably, she’s the finest female singer in country music. Her voice, alternately sultry and full of yearning, is spiced with a sensual growl.

Their music, devoid of instrumental excesses and production frills, is a potpourri of bluegrass, gospel and pop, with a smidgeon of Boswell Sisters-style harmonizing tossed in.

The CBS special is a terrific showcase for such Judds songs as “Girls Night Out” and “Why Not Me.” It’s also a great showcase for the folksy, friendly side of the Judds.

But there’s another side. . . .

Many of their fans think the Judds’ relationship is relentlessly sunny. But they’re obviously not reading the gossip rags, where the duo is known as the battling Judds.

The Judds didn’t shy away from questions about their relationship. In fact, they brought up the conflicts themselves.

“Three years ago, I didn’t dig my mother at all,” said Wynonna. “We were always fighting. We’d yell at each other, throw things at each other. There were times I’d think she was crazy. I still think that at times. I know she thinks I’m crazy too. But that’s normal.

“The problem is that she’s a mother and she treats me like a little girl sometimes. I hate that. But sometimes I act like a little girl. I guess that’s when she treats me like a little girl.”

Added Naomi: “The mother-daughter relationship is the most complex and difficult of all family relationships. We’re still learning how to get along. What makes all this so strange is that I’m working with my daughter seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Normally, girls have cut the apron strings at 20 and don’t see their mothers as often after that. But my daughter works with me. The normal mother-daughter tensions are magnified in our situation, which has the added stress of us being celebrities.”

Wynonna placed much of the blame on her own moodiness and insecurity. “I’m not always very happy,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I feel fat and stupid and unlovable. I don’t want to be Wynonna Judd. I want to be somewhere else; I want to be doing something else. I can be hard to get along with. I’m very moody.

“I get out of hand and my mother tries to bring me back to earth. That’s a battle. We fight and make up and fight and make up and fight again.”

Added Naomi: “It’s built into our situation. Underneath it all we love each other, but sometimes we’re at each other’s throats--but not so much anymore. We’ve been doing better lately.”

Throughout lunch, Naomi kept harping on them being jus’ plain folks. That’s a running theme in the TV special, which guest-stars Gary Morris and features lots of documentary-style footage of the pair on the road--in concert and interacting with fans. The purpose is to humanize the Judds, to show them as stars who are still quite accessible to their public, who haven’t let fame bloat their egos.

All that talk about them being ordinary people was not, Naomi insisted, hype. “We’re sincere about this. In country music it’s important not to get a swelled head and not to get too far from the people. Singers who do that pay for it one day.

“I can be sitting here in this fancy French restaurant in West Hollywood, but I’m still just a plain country girl from Kentucky, a divorced single mother who’s trying to raise her kids. I’ve spent much more time poor than rich. We’ve done well in the last couple of years. Before that, it was poverty. We can’t forget that.”

Natives of Ashland, Ky., the Judds once led a gypsy life style, wandering around the country settling here and there. Naomi and her two daughters--the other one, Ashley, is on the special--even lived in West Hollywood for a while before relocating to Nashville in 1979.

While supporting her daughters by working as a nurse, Naomi was lured into a musical career by Wynonna, who’d been passionate about singing since she was 12. They got a record deal with RCA in 1983 and have been cranking out No. 1 country singles ever since.

They claim to be inseparable--musically, that is--despite all the rumors that Wynonna plans to go solo.

“I’ve heard all those rumors and they’re just nonsense,” Wynonna insisted. “Individually we’re not as strong as we are as a duo. We might not get along well all the time, but that doesn’t mean anything. She’s my mamma and my singing partner. She’s going to be my singing partner for years to come.”

Naomi looked lovingly at her daughter and patted her on the shoulder.

Turned off by doting-mother gestures once again, Wynonna said: “Awwww Mom, c’mon. . . .”