The Bodyguard (ABC Monday at 8 p.m.),...

The Bodyguard (ABC Monday at 8 p.m.), an enjoyably bad, over-the-top 1992 release, stars Kevin Costner as an ex-Secret Service agent who becomes a bodyguard for Whitney Houston’s gorgeous pop superstar. Directed by Mick Jackson, from an early Lawrence Kasdan screenplay.

Although this 1992 hit finally can’t resist the siren call of its own sentimentality, A League of Their Own (CBS Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.) is blessed with a creative team, including Tom Hanks and Geena Davis. They both know how to make the most of the film’s concept: the exploits of the wartime All-American Girls Professonal Baseball League.

Total Recall (ABC Thursday at 9 p.m.), Paul Verhoeven’s spectacular raw and brutal 1990 futuristic hit, asks whether Arnold Schwarzenneger is a malcontent construction worker obsessed with dreams of Mars and sleazy brunettes or is a turncoat secret agent, his memory erased by the all-powerful intergalactic “Agency.” It’s part typical Schwarzenegger vehicle and part ingenious probe into psychological terror.

Louis Gossett Jr.’s burning equanimity as a super-fighter, James Woods’ live-wire gall as his buddy and Bruce Dern’s edgy intensity as the great heavy of the piece--plus Oliver Pratt as a preppie-looking cardsharp--liven up Michael Ritchie’s 1992 boxing-gambling comedy Diggstown (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.).

Forever Young (NBC Saturday at 9 p.m.) stars Mel Gibson as a test pilot for the Air Corps, circa 1939, when tragedy strikes--and by chance he re-enters the world, no worse for wear, in 1992. Plucky Elijah Wood becomes Gibson’s precocious playmate, and his mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) would like to be another kind of playmate, but Gibson’s still mooning over his ‘30s sweetheart (Isabel Glasser).

In the 1970 Dodes’ka-den (KCET Saturday at 10:50 p.m.), Akira Kurosawa, a director with an unusual affinity for society’s underbelly, takes a look at the beleaguered inhabitants of a Tokyo slum--defeated, desperate or mad. The film is shot in searing smears of color--reds and browns that blaze off the screen; it has none of the muted poetry-of-poverty of a De Sica, but something more savage and strange. It was a flop that almost destroyed Kurosawa’s career (and even his life), and it’s a fascinating, personal effort.