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6 FRIDAY RUSSELL SIMMONS' DEF COMEDY JAM (HBO, midnight-12:30 a.m.) Russell Simmons, founder of the pioneering rap-music label Def Jam Records, is overseeing this showcase for young, largely unknown comedi-ans, most of them African- Americans. The Def Comedy Jam is intended to expose cable subscribers to cutting-edge hip-hop humor. You might recognize host Martin Lawrence from his appearances in Kid 'N Play's House Party movies; he's a smooth, assured performer whose own brief routine about the sexual stereotyping of blacks is sharply amusing. Lawrence introduces each performer, and in the shows I've seen, just about all the comics are fitfully funny and aggressively obscene, taking full advantage of cable TV's four-letter-word freedom. One of the best is Derrick Fox, a young fellow who's developed a hilarious alter ego-a ditzy female vogue dancer, Shante-but whose hip-hop references may be a little obscure for the general viewer: ''My mama used to say, 'God don't like ugly,''' says Fox at one point. ''Well, if God don't like ugly, Biz Markie is the Antichrist.'' If you don't know rapper Markie-well, it's a pretty funny line, trust me. B
8 SUNDAY
MOVIE: NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (ABC, 8:30-11:20 p.m.) The real Bond-Sean Connery-is back in this 1983 thriller loosely based on Thunderball. It's a treat to see Connery (who was returning to the role after a 12-year absence), but some-thing crucial is missing here: that jazzy 007 theme music. C+
THE NIGHTMAN (NBC, 9-11 p.m.) Hot schlock: A love triangle in the sultry summer South, with Growing Pains' Joanna Kerns as a languid hotel owner trying to keep her 17-year-old daughter (Bull Dur-ham's Jenny Robertson) from pawing the new night manager (New York stage new night manager (New York stage actor Ted Marcoux). He's the ''nightman'' of the title, a mumbling slab of beef, and Kerns' character-a single mom given to purring ''I'm a woman who needs a man''- wants him all to herself. After the nightman beds both women, tempers flare, the Georgia sun raises a sweat on everyone, and-kaboom!-a pistol goes off: Mama's dead. Nightman is arrested, but did he kill her? The Nightman, written by John Wells, Lucille Fletcher, and James Poe and directed by former Hill Street Blues actor Charles Haid, is told in flashback scenes: The steamy story is recalled by the daughter, now grown up to be a morose doctor and convinced that the former night manager-out on parole after being convicted of murder-is stalking her. Haid, who did such lean, tough work directing the most recent In the Line of Duty TV movie, gets all arty and pretentious here. It's easy to see why Kerns took the part-her cat in heat is a big departure from her Growing Pains role, and she's playfully good at it. But Robertson never seems believable as a teenager, and Marcoux seems far too good an actor to believe this overcooked tripe. D+
IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH (CBS, 9-11 p.m.) Lesley Ann Warren (Family of Spies) stars in this TV movie as a Texas woman with multiple sclerosis. Weak and in a wheelchair, she needs someone to care for her during the day, and her husband (Steel Magnolias' Tom Skerritt) hires a neighborhood woman played by China Beach's Marg Helgenberger. In the visual code of network TV movies, the instant Helgenberger makes her entrance in a tight tank top, we know what the theme of this piece is going to be: Husband falls in love with Caregiver. The lovers suffer great guilt but pursue their affair because, as Skerritt says to Helgenberger, ''I just can't stand the thought of losing you.'' We're supposed to feel pity for everyone: the helpless wife, of course, but also the husband (because he hasn't enjoyed physical intimacy in a long time), and also the neighbor (because she's basically good-hearted and terribly lonely as well). But the script, by coproducer Joyce Eliason, takes such care to make everyone equally guilty and miserable that the characters cancel each other out, and we're left with a slow, dreary little drama. D
