TV REVIEWS : Friendship Test in ‘Message’

“A Message From Holly” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8) is a lachrymose drama starring Lindsay Wagner and Shelley Long as two dear friends facing the test of their lives.

Wagner’s character, a rebellious artist and single parent essentially still living in the afterglow of the 1960s, has terminal cancer and six months to live. Long’s character is an old college buddy turned high-powered, workaholic stockbroker who takes a leave of absence to move in with her ailing friend and become a surrogate mother to the woman’s 6-year-old daughter.

In the well-trod tradition of TV movies about fatal illness and the strength to endure, the production is not exactly a Yuletide package. Its chief metaphor, though, is a huge angel’s wing sculptured by the dying mother--the “message” of the title.

Wagner and Long manage to wring some fireworks out of this material as harsh reality intrudes and their relationship is strained to the breaking point. But the script by Dalene Young, from a story by executive producer Beth Polson, is pretty mournful going, especially the grueling scenes with the daughter (Molly Orr), who struggles to understand why her mommy is “going away to nirvana.”