In James Lapine’s 1991 Impromptu (KCET Sunday...

In James Lapine’s 1991 Impromptu (KCET Sunday at 9 p.m.), Judy Davis plays George Sand, the most popular and notorious female writer of the early 19th Century. It ought to be a great role for Davis, but the movie, which centers on Sand’s affair with Chopin (Hugh Grant), is too shallow and slight to do her justice.

The Music of Chance (KCET Monday at 8:30 p.m.) finds a Boston fireman (Mandy Patinkin) with $20,000 in his pocket. He stakes a poker whiz (James Spader) to a game with a seemingly pushover pair of lottery-winning millionaire housemates (Charles Durning and Joel Grey), planning to split the winnings 50-50. Phil Auster’s 1990 novel, directed and co-scripted by Philip Haas, made it to the screen in 1993 with its low-key creepiness intact.

In George Lucas’ ingeniously structured 1973 American Graffiti (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.), we get the romance of rock ‘n’ roll and the sweet, painful nostalgia on the last night in summer, 1962. The cast evokes a reverie all its own: Four ex-high school buddies--Richard Dreyfuss as the brains, Paul Le Mat as the brawn, Ron Howard as the straight arrow and Charles Martin Smith as the wise guy--unknowingly witness the end of an era. Co-starring Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford, Candy Clark.

Except for Dreyfuss and Suzanne Somers (the girl in the classic white T-Bird), the old crowd assembles again in More American Graffiti (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.). The 1979 film centers on the New Year’s Eves between 1964 and 1967, and it succeeds in showing a media-saturated generation. What is disturbing here is the trivialization of the ‘60s, which has so much meaning to so many.

The Cowboys (KCOP Saturday at 5:30 p.m.) proved to be one of John Wayne’s most controversial films. Wayne plays a Montana rancher who, because of a gold strike, has to turn to schoolboys to help drive his 1,500 head of cattle to market 400 miles away. Inevitably, the experience becomes a rite of passage for the boys, and part of it means taking the law into their own hands and even turning into killers. Bruce Dern makes a fine, nasty villain.

Holiday (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.), one of George Cukor’s finest films, is a scintillating 1938 adaptation of the Philip Barry book. A breezy Cary Grant captivates Manhattan high society heiress Katharine Hepburn. With Lew Ayres, memorable as Hepburn’s hard-drinking brother.