With the country currently in the grip...

With the country currently in the grip of Ellen Barkin fever--drowning in a Sea of Love, grinning crookedly at Johnny Handsome--it’s time to catch up again with Jim McBride’s quick-witted, flavorsome 1988 murder-mystery romance, The Big Easy (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.). In it, the steamy Ms. Barkin gets in a tangle with amiably corrupt assistant D.A. Dennis Quaid, who sports the hottest grin and the sauciest accent in New Orleans.

Also on Sunday, Arthur Penn’s Dead of Winter (Channel 5 at 8 p.m.) gives us Mary Steenburgen as a bewildered actress in a snowbound house, persecuted by crazy people: a thin, wintry thriller made special by its director and star. Blake Edwards’ 1982 Trail of the Pink Panther (Channel 7 at 9:30 p.m.) is one of two “Panther” movies made after Peter Sellers’ death, stitched uneasily but sometimes hilariously together by Edwards, with unused footage from other movies, notably the series’ masterpiece, “The Pink Panther Strikes Again.” And An Eight Is Enough Wedding (NBC at 9 p.m.) is for all you “Eight” fans that didn’t get enough from 1977-81.

Two newsworthy ladies with famous names go through the TV movie bio mill Monday night, with the first offering the kind of results we’ve come to expect: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Channel 5 at 8 p.m.), with Jaclyn Smith, and Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer (NBC at 9 p.m.), a new film with Chynna Phillips and Perry King.

Whatever happened to John Travolta? Well, look who’s talking; how soon they forget. When Saturday Night Fever (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) broke in 1977, there was no one bigger. He had the whitest suit, the shiniest hair. He was king of disco. (Whatever happened to that?) Lord of the street, Tony Manero, slickest cat on the floor. Bop, bop, bop, bop, Stayin’ alive, Stayin’ alive. . . . This John Badham movie killed them back then: It was “Top Hat,” “Rocky” and “Rebel Without a Cause” rolled into one. So remember, all you dogs by the side of the caravan: What goes around, comes around. Who knows: Maybe Travolta will co-star in Ellen Barkin’s next movie.

Or perhaps Pia Zadora’s. Remember her? Think back to 1983’s The Lonely Lady (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.). Sex, glamour, sin, success. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Harold Robbins’ look at Hollywood’s underbelly, with Pia Z. playing an aspiring but disillusioned screenwriter. Unfortunately, this film is a dog that never had its day.

By the time it’s over, Streets of Gold (Channel 7 Thursday at 9:30 p.m.) has turned into a hopeless mishmash of “Rocky” and “Moscow on the Hudson,” with phony-inspirational boxing matches and empty sermons, but, at the beginning, there are surprisingly pungent scenes with Klaus Maria Brandauer as a Russian immigrant, trying to adjust to New York.

Neil Simon’s parody of Bogart movies, The Cheap Detective (Channel 5 Friday at 8 p.m.), directed by Robert Moore, is wispy as cigarette smoke next to Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam,” but it has a full-to-bursting cast--Peter Falk as Bogey, Ann-Margret as baby, John Houseman as the Fat Man and Madeline Kahn as Bad Brigid--and some amusing Simon badinage.

Kirk Douglas and James Coburn play a Western outlaw and lawman past their prime and vainly slapping leather for laughs in the mostly forced but sometimes rowdily amusing 1984 made-for-TV adventure, Draw! (Channel 11 Friday at 8 p.m.).

Back in 1967, Peter Falk made his debut as the rumpled but sly Lt. Columbo in Prescription: Murder (Channel 5 Saturday at 8 p.m.), with Gene Barry as the first of many murderous slicksters who thought they had the dowdy cop outfoxed. And, back in 1976, star Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson made the first of their many films together, St. Ives (Channel 13 Saturday at 8 p.m.), with Bronson as a jaded writer, hired to recover some incriminating ledgers. The action is fitful, the writing murky.

Not the first, but an early Vietnam film was Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in Company C (Channel 7 Saturday at 9 p.m.). Released the same year as “The Deer Hunter,” it focuses, with considerably less mythic force, on the training of some raw Marines.

For nightowls (past midnight): Sunday: Stranger on the Run (3:30 a.m. on Channel 5). Monday: Tom Thumb (2:30 a.m. on 9); Salty O’Rourke (3:30 a.m. on 5). Tuesday: Cape Fear (3:30 a.m. on 5); A Boy Ten Feet Tall (3:30 a.m. on 13). Wednesday: Penny Serenade (1:30 a.m. on 7); Top Hat (2:30 a.m. on 9); The General Died at Dawn (3:30 a.m. on 5); The Chapman Report (3:30 a.m. on 13). Friday: The Man Who Knew Too Much (‘34) (1:30 a.m. on 7). Saturday: Tim (1 a.m. on 7).

The ratings checks on movies in the TV log are provided by the Tribune TV Log listings service.