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A guide to notable programs by BRUCE FRETTS (Times are Eastern daylight and are subject to change.)
WESTERNS It's a shame that it apparently took the publicity surrounding Christopher Reeve's recent equestrian accident to get CBS to take BLACK FOX: THE PRICE OF PEACE (Aug. 4, 9-11 p.m.) off the shelf after two years. The second part of a Reeve trilogy, which began with Black Fox on July 28 and concludes with Black Fox: Good Men and Bad on Aug. 11, Peace casts the ex-Man of Steel as an 1860s Carolina horseman who settles in Texas with an ex-slave friend who's given the Native American name Black Fox (Candyman's charismatic Tony Todd). The plot of this sprawling six-hour epic is somewhat soapy and predictable (''Injuns'' rape Reeve's wife; a racist mob attacks Todd), but Reeve gives a quietly compelling performance, and the Black Fox movies are far superior to CBS' similarly themed, Emmy-nominated miniseries Children of the Dust. Still, it's hard not to shiver at the scene in which Reeve asks his wife, ''How'd I ever get so lucky?'' before mounting his steed and riding off into the sunset.
MOVIES
Tom Selleck is forever putting on and taking off a scholarly pair of wire-rim glasses in BROKEN TRUST (TNT, Aug. 6, 8-10 p.m.), and he never looks comfortable doing so. It's difficult to accept him as a judge recruited by the Justice Department to finger other, corrupt judges. One reason Selleck was so likable in Magnum P.I. was that he seemed like a nice lunkhead. Here, trying to convey sobersided thoughtfulness, Selleck just seems like.a nice lunkhead. The script by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne is smartly cynical. But it's never credible that Selleck's straight-arrow judge -- scholar or lunkhead -- would agree to be a snitch for the schemes dreamed up by the poker-faced government agents played ploddingly by Elizabeth McGovern and William Atherton.
-- Ken Tucker A message movie that never stoops to preaching, A MOTHER'S PRAYER (USA, Aug. 2, 9-11 p.m.) stars Linda Hamilton (The Terminator) as a New York City single mom with AIDS who attempts to find a new home for her son (Noah Fleiss) in anticipation of her imminent death. Relegated recently on the big screen to thankless roles like Richard Dreyfuss' wife in last year's blip Silent Fall, Hamilton is fiercely believable here. And she's given able support by Kate Nelligan and Bruce Dern (as a couple interested in adopting the boy) and an out-of-drag RuPaul (as a Gay Men's Health Crisis counselor). Even though he wears men's sweaters, RuPaul doesn't stretch too much; when Hamilton tells him she's going public with her crusade on The Jane Whitney Show, he responds with a rousing ''Go, girl!''
HOLLYWOOD
Latter-day cinematic diva Faye Dunaway hosts INSIDE THE DREAM FACTORY (TCM, Aug. 8, 9-10 p.m.), a mash note to the studios of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Clips of Citizen Kane, Singin' in the Rain, The Little Princess, and The Petrified Forest; interviews with Jack Lemmon, Janet Leigh, Ann Miller, and June Allyson; and profiles of moguls Darryl F. Zanuck, Louis B. Mayer, and Samuel Goldwyn help Factory gloss over the exploitative nature of the feudal system. The standard seven-year exclusive contract with an option to be dropped every six months ''weeded out the wannabes from the had-to-bes,'' Dunaway intones melodramatically. And Jane Russell recalls, ''We were taught how to dress.. They were really very supportive,'' without a hint of Cross-Your-Heart sarcasm.
