Frank Capra’s 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life,...

Frank Capra’s 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life, a Christmas perennial with a unique capacity for renewing a viewer’s sense of self-worth, stars James Stewart as a frazzled small-town businessman who gets a magical chance to see what life would have been like had he never been born. The film receives what is most likely a record-setting 15 airings this week: Sunday--KCAL at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. (both times colorized); Monday--Disney Channel at 9:15 p.m.; Tuesday--KTTV at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday--AMC at 6 p.m., TNT at 10 p.m. and KCET at 11 p.m.; Friday--AMC at midnight and 7 a.m., Family Channel, colorized, at 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., and Lifetime at 4 p.m.; Saturday--AMC at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; next Sunday--KABC at 12:30 a.m.

Pale Rider (ABC Sunday at 8:30 p.m.), Clint Eastwood’s 1985 variation on “Shane” is pleasant enough but is marred by an unlikely and queasy development which finds a teen-age idolater (Sydney Penny) trying to seduce Eastwood’s grizzled Stranger, set to take on a ruthless gold mining company.

Strangers in Good Company (KCET Monday at 9:30 p.m.), Cynthia Scott’s strange, lovely and often moving 1990 film features seven elderly women who are forced to stay a few days in a ramshackle, abandoned house on the edge of a Quebec country lake after their bus breaks down.

The pungent jabs to the funny bone by writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel set the tempo for the 1989 Parenthood (CBS Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.), an unrelenting one-two rhythm that eventually overwhelms any demurrers about some sticky-sweet patches in the face of so much wit, nerve and insight on the subject of parenthood, spread over four generations and four separate households. Ron Howard directs with a fine touch a large, starry cast headed by Steve Martin.

March of the Wooden Soldiers (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m., Thursday at 2:30 a.m.) is the alternate title for the delightful 1934 Laurel and Hardy version of the Victor Herbert operetta “Babes in Toyland.”

A Christmas Carol (CBS Thursday at 9 p.m.) is the outstanding 1984 TV movie version of the Charles Dickens classic. Directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott as Scrooge.

David Zucker’s 1988 The Naked Gun (CBS Saturday at 9 p.m.) is a vulgar collection of cheesy jokes, bald stick-it-in-your-eye slapstick, appalling parodies of old TV cop shows and puns that add up to irresistible hilarity.

Grand Hotel (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.) One of the first and best of the all-star movies, with Garbo, Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore and more in MGM’s memorable 1932 version of the Vicki Baum novel.