The 1992 Taking Back My Life (CBS...

The 1992 Taking Back My Life (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) may be the boldest expression of rape that has ever aired on prime-time network television. Above all, it is a gritty human story based on the real-life victim Nancy Ziegenmeyer, an Iowa mother of three who elected to go public with graphic details of her 1988 case as a clarion call to victims of rape, in hopes of lifting their burden of shame and anonymity.

Although Dad (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), the 1989 film of William Wharton’s 1981 novel, goes from an honest, painful portrayal to a family-style uplift, Jack Lemmon is extraordinary in the title role. He plays a 75-year-old retiree confronted with the terrors of old age. There’s splendid support, too, from Olympia Dukakis as his nasty wife and Ted Danson as his son, a self-absorbed Wall Street go-getter.

The 1993 TV movie In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco (NBC Monday at 9 p.m.) adds little to the lore of Branch Davidian sect leader David Koresh (Tim Daly)--a musician-singer who proclaimed himself the Messiah for his followers. Nor does it provide insight into the minds of charismatic zealots such as Koresh and those who would submit to him so obediently.

What elevates Call Me Anna (ABC Monday at 9 p.m.), a turbulent 1990 TV movie based on the life of Patty Duke, above the crowd are its wrenching depictions of her tragically bizarre childhood and her mental illness that seemed to surface only later; Duke plays herself as an adult.

Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg’s 1985 Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (KCET Wednesday at 9 p.m.) reveals what life was like for gays and lesbians before gay liberation. It does so largely through interviews with men and women who have the wit and humor of survivors who have at times endured virtually medieval oppression.

Paris Poirier’s 1993 Last Call at Maud’s (KCET Wednesday at 10:30 p.m.) at once bids fond farewell to a cherished San Francisco landmark and documents a social revolution; you can’t help, however, but suspect that the loss of Maud’s reflects the loss of a sense of community that permeates so much of American life today.

Johnny Handsome (KCOP Thursday at 8 p.m.), a 1989 Walter Hill thriller about a deformed sociopath (Mickey Rourke) and his second chance at life, has a temperament like a three-time loser. This action movie works fine in its hard-bitten, gutsy first half when it’s locked up in the jail or the hospital, but when it’s sprung into the open air it can’t handle freedom.