TV Reviews : Susan Lucci Is the ‘Woman Who Sinned’

There’s bad and there’s laughably bad. ABC’s “The Woman Who Sinned” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) falls in the latter category. As the plot twists pile up, this ludicrous Susan Lucci vehicle is an absolute howl.

Lucci plays Victoria, a beautiful art gallery owner who has an extramarital affair because hubby Michael (Tim Matheson) wants kids and she doesn’t. “I know a lot of working mothers,” she says, “and you can’t imagine how tough that first year is.” Oh, the pain. Oh, the anguish.

When her best friend turns up dead, Victoria is accused of murder. To clear herself, she must admit that on the night of the killing, she was with her photographer boyfriend Evan (Michael Dudikoff). But he has vanished, and tough cop Girvetz (John Vernon) doesn’t believe he ever existed. Hubby packs a bag.

There’s more: the ill-fated, chain-smoking, gum-snapping, alcoholic female Sam Spade (Christina Belford), a stolen Columbian art operation, hubby’s own confession about hanky-panky--”I couldn’t let you think you were the only one”--a church sermon about the wages of sin, and excruciating, romance-novel flashbacks.

Dudikoff comes off like a drop-out beach bum; his demeanor shrieks “psychopath.” But he’s not any more out of place than the rest of the cast. Catch Lucci and Matheson’s late-hour Nick and Nora Charles conversion. Or the hilariously awful finale.

Writer Denne Petitclerc was aided and abetted in this telecrime by director Michael Switzer.