Christy

That heartwarming Christy is back, just in time to offer a two-hour Thanksgiving special. In the title role, Kellie Martin is as utterly beguiling as ever playing the prim-yet-spunky frontier schoolteacher, and Christy has quickly perfected the format it was developing in its trial run a few months ago. Which is? Copy Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman with every ounce of strength you have. Christy has all of Dr. Quinn's cotton-candy colors, its impeccably dressed pioneers, its homespun wisdom (''Sometimes it's the difficulty of the task that makes it worth doing'' is a lesson here), and a sexy male costar (in this case, the chiseled young minister David, played by Randall Batinkoff). In this edition of Christy, a poor fall harvest in Cutter Gap leaves the stomachs of Christy's impoverished students growling. Tyne Daly, reprising her role as Miss Alice, gets involved in a comic subplot about shooting a turkey, but really, it's all pretty irrelevant. What matters are the virtuous vibes that Martin and Christy give out in this radiant family fare. B+

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