‘92 YEAR IN REVIEW : TV Movies: The Good, Bad, the In-Between : Year-end review: Performances by Anne Bancroft and Robert Morse were among the year’s highlights.

It’s a wrap for TV movies/’92. In a tradition begun last year, we focus a kaleidoscopic eye on the diversity, patterns, quirks, highs and a few of the more wrenching lows of the year.

For all those artists and movies we missed--or didn’t love or hate enough to mention--there’s always, of course, next year.

So on with the bouquets--or plums, tomatoes and cabbages, as the groundlings, theater’s earliest critics, were fond of hurling:

* Best actress period: Anne Bancroft--for her Jewish mom in Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” (ABC) and for her forlorn, murderous housewife in “Mrs. Cage” (PBS, “American Playhouse”).

* Best actress maybe: Meredith Baxter -- for both her uncanny Betty Broderick roles, “A Woman Scorned” and “Her Final Fury: The Last Chapter” (CBS).

* Biggest growth and stretch by an actress: Jean Smart--for leaping from a savage hooker/serial killer in “Overkill” (NBC) to a shy, endearing schoolteacher in “Just My Imagination” (CBS). This is what acting should be all about.

* Second place for breaking down stereotypes: Lesley Ann Warren--for her gentle, wheelchair-bound handicapped housewife in “In Sickness and In Health” (CBS) and for her demented mom plotting murder in “Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story” (ABC).

* Best actor: Robert Morse--for “Tru” (PBS, “American Playhouse”).

* Best actor maybe: Tie between Robert Duvall as the entitled “Stalin” (HBO) and JamesFarentino for his chilling wife beater in “When No One Would Listen” (CBS).

* Best adaptation of a classic novel: A tie between Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!” (CBS) and George Eliot’s “Adam Bede” (PBS, “Masterpiece Theater”), two rich, pastoral movies.

* Most impressive star-co-writer-co-producer turn: Cybil Shepherd--for her resonant, stylish Southern kidnaping tale, “Memphis” (which signaled a new-found creativity at TNT).

* Steamiest clinch: Sean Young and Jeff Fahey--for tearing each other’s clothes off, legs entangling like grappling hooks, in “Sketch Artist” (Showtime).

* Best women’s point-of-view movies: Tie between “Grand Isle” (TNT)--a woman’s sensual awakening, put together by producer-star Kelly McGinnis, directed by Mary Lambert--and “Crazy in Love,” a drama of a woman’s obsessive jealousy, directed by Martha Coolidge and starring Gena Rowlands and Holly Hunter (TNT).

* Most suave icy killer: Treat Williams--for “Deadly Matrimony” and “Till Death Do Us Part” (both NBC).

* Best throwback to the days of drop-dead femmes fatales: Beverly D’Angelo--as the smirky, cold-blooded murderess in “Trial: The Price of Passion” (NBC).

* Most frightening psycho killers: gleaming, sexy Jennifer Rubin and sicko Dylan McDermott in “The Fear Inside” (Showtime).

* Best celebrity movie: “The Jacksons--An American Dream” (ABC).

* Most feral, dangerous performances: Triple tie among charismatic Eric Roberts in “Fugitive Among Us” (CBS), Sandahl Bergman as a mad trucker in “Revenge on the Highway” (NBC) and Steven Berkoff as a madman in Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart (Bravo).

* Best homage to a classic movie: “Notorious” (Lifetime).

* The nadir of the TV movie year: A tie between the fold-out postcard “To Be the Best,” a flaccid story of lust, greed and family betrayal (CBS), and the turgid “Miss America: Behind the Crown” (NBC).

* Worst casting and dumbest credit for announcing a non-pro, Miss America, starring as herself: “Introducing Carolyn Sapp as Herself” (“Miss America: Behind the Crown,” NBC).

* Best TV movie performance by a major movie star: Kirk Douglas in “The Secret” (CBS), an autumn-tinged performance of aging father with dyslexia in cogent script by Cynthia Cherbak.

* Most disappointing TV movie performance by a major movie star: Anthony Hopkins sleepwalking through “To Be the Best” (CBS).

* Best line of dialogue: “Well, at last he did something human”--a doctor describing Roy Cohn’s death in “Citizen Cohn” (HBO), teleplay by David Franzoni based on the Nicholas von Hoffman biography.

* Best timing: “Charles and Diana” (ABC).

* Best look-alikes: Roger Rees and Catherine Oxenberg--as the entitled “Charles and Diana” (ABC).

* Most vivid opening scene: The vehicle rolling down a dark street with big round yellow headlights glowing like Satanic eyes in “Artists in Crime” (PBS, “Mystery!”).

* Best political movie: “Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story” (HBO)--script by Abby Mann and crackling direction by Alastair Reid used contemporary history as an election year weapon when it nailed Reagan and Bush for taking Teamster dollars in return for a promise to kill a deregulation bill.

* Best racial drama: “Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story” (NBC)--a true-life, near-reinterpretation of “Native Son,” directed by Kevin Hooks, written by Richard Wesley.

* Best writing: Tie between Richard Wesley, “Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story” (NBC) and Abby Mann, “The Jackie Presser Story” (HBO).

* Most socially useful TV movie: “The Broken Cord” (ABC)--about alcohol fetal syndrome, directed by Ken Olin from Anne Beckett’s unsentimental screenplay.

* Strongest pro-choice movie: “A Private Matter” (HBO)--Sissy Spacek as a mother facing birth of a deformed baby in life-in-America before Roe vs. Wade, directed by Joan Micklin Silver from a teleplay by William Nicholson.

* Most terrifying domestic violence: “When No One Would Listen” (CBS)--Michelle Lee and James Farentino, notable for use of monologue device, script by Cindy Myers, direction by Armand Mastroianni.

* Best divorce drama: “Getting Up and Going Home” (Lifetime)--Blythe Danner and Tom Skeritt in Peter Nelson’s adaptation of Robert Anderson’s novel.

* Best Western: “Four Eyes and Six Guns” (TNT)--Judge Reinhold as a Western Everyman, from Leon Prochnik’s rich, comedic script.

* Most inspiring movie about American schools: “A Town Torn Apart” (NBC)--true-life saga of principal who turned a dead high school into an educational paradise, directed by Daniel Petrie from a teleplay by Anne Gerard.

* Best capital punishment movie: “LIVE! From Death Row” (Fox)--Patrick Duncan’s raw cinema verite /reality TV tabloid show carried to the max.

* Boldest expression of rape: “Taking Back My Life” (CBS)--the scrappy, flinty Patricia Wettig as the heroine in a clarion call for rape victims to stand up and be heard.

* Primetime’s most candid portrayal of homosexual love: “Lost Language of the Cranes” (PBS, “Great Performances”).

* Other deeper losses--actors who privately knew they were making their final movies: Brad Davis--a gentle, soothing performance in the Southern Gothic tale “The Habitation of Dragons” (TNT) and Anthony Perkins--a curious, edgy investigator in “In the Deep Woods” (NBC).

* Most experimental drama: “Fool’s Fire” (PBS, “American Playhouse”)--writer-director Julie Taymor’s mind-bending adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Hopfrog.”

* Freshest comedic departure: Jaclyn Smith--for Walter Mitty-heroine in romantic fantasy “Love Can Be Murder” (NBC).

* Most lachrymose movie: “A Message From Holly” (CBS)--about dying and enduring.

* Best original song for a TV movie: “Whompin’ Pally Thompson,” on “Just My Imagination” (NBC)--risible lyrics by Lynn Roth and rock score by David McHugh.

* Egregious racial slight: the producers of “A Killer Among Friends” (CBS)--for casting Anglo principals (Patty Duke and her daughter) in true-life teen murder story that was in fact lived by Hispanic characters (Irene Avila and her daughter).

* Best cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond--for “Stalin” (HBO).

* Best look at L.A.’s squalid underbelly: “From the Files of Joseph Wambaugh” (NBC).

* Best nostalgic, romantic look at L.A. of the ‘40s: Tie between “Love Can Be Murder” (NBC) and “Lady Against the Odds” (NBC).

* Best costume design: Dorothy Amos--her knockout designs for Beverly D’Angelo in “Trial: The Price of Passion” (NBC).

* Most explosive opening: “In Arms of a Killer” (NBC)--writer-director Robert Collins’ grungy drug slaying in a cheap hotel room.

* Best mood-setting interior scene: “In Arms of the Killer” (NBC)--director Collins’ decadent tableaux of tuxedo-dressed sinners and their bejeweled women gathered on divans surrounded by huge Jackson Pollock painting while their host lies murdered in bed upstairs.

* Best man-against-nature picture: “Survive the Savage Sea” (ABC)--Torrid, South Seas ocean nightmare directed by Kevin James Dobson.

* Promising cable TV movie series designed to showcase works of stage writers: “Screenworks” (TNT)--impressive send-off with David Mamet’s affecting “The Water Engine.”

* Most experimental performance by an actor: Robert Loggia in “Merry Christmas, Baby” (A&E;)--as a biblical father from hell with a gleam in his eye and a rusty, raspy voice.

* Best sense of place: Triple tie between the sultry Louisiana milieu of “Grand Isle” (TNT), the bucolic, raggedy resort hotel in “The Nightman” (NBC) and the post belle-epoque era of “Ashenden” (A&E;).

* Most thankless role: William Russ as the crude office slug in sexual harassment movie “Sexual Advances” (ABC).

* All-around clunker: “Criminal Behavior” with Farrah Fawcett in embarrassing role as aerobics cop (ABC).

* Best potboiler: “The Secret Passion of Robert Clayton” (USA).

* Most repelling scene: “Child of Rage” (CBS)--for moment when crazed child pokes sharp needle into the family collie.

* Best movie about the elderly: Tie between “Memento Mori” and “Best of Friends” (both PBS, “Masterpiece Theater”).

It was the best of TV times, the worst of TV times, to paraphrase Dickens. Among the cable networks, HBO is making the best movies but TNT is catching up. PBS movies, thanks largely to “American Playhouse” and the BBC, remain in a world all their own, enriching the medium.