TV REVIEWS : Gregory K., the Authorized Version

Amy Fisher--3; Gregory K.--2.

That’s how many TV movies these notorious kids have chalked up between them, ample evidence of the headline mania that stifles creative imagination at the network movie level.

Just two months after ABC aired “Gregory K.,” about the boy who successfully dumped his parents, now comes the authorized version, meaning the youth, his attorney and his newly adopted family approve of the script.

Actually, “A Place to Be Loved” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8), is not much different from the first Gregory yarn seen Feb. 8, but at least the odyssey of the boy who pioneered a child’s legal right to separate from his biological mother because of abuse and neglect remains timely, informative material.

As entertainment, however, the experience is rather dreary. Blair Ferguson’s script is thematically well-grounded, challenging the premise that children are property, but the writing is also hackneyed. And Sandy Smolan’s direction is about as routine as it gets.

“A Place to Be Loved” features affecting performances by Tom Guiry as the 12-year-old who sues his mother (the blowzy Jocelyn O’Brien) and by Richard Crenna as the real-life lawyer George Russ, who plucked the youth from a boys’ ranch in Florida and began the laborious process to legally adopt him, despite the fact he and his wife (the bland Donna Reed-clone Linda Kelsey) already had eight children.