Sunday

Hull High
(NBC, 7-8 p.m.)

Hull High crosses Mr. Novak with Fame: A handsome, devoted teacher (Will Lyman) serves as the brooding conscience for a high school in which students occasionally break into exuberant rap songs and full- scale musical numbers. The pilot spent a lot of time mooning over the eminently moon-able Nancy Valen, as a novice teacher, but the producers probably won't be allowed to showcase Valen in tight clothing every week as the show's main plot. The program is choreographed by Kenny Ortega of Dirty Dancing fame, so the production numbers have a sexy snap.

Behind the scenes
In the time slot long held by The Wonderful World of Disney, NBC has scheduled a high-school musical filled with skintight costumes, voluptuous starlets, and provocattve dancing — and that's just the teaching staff. Walt might disapprove of Hull High's equally libidinous student body, but executive producer Gil Grant says the show is an accurate depiction of teen life — ''and that includes sexuality.'' Look for a few songs and at least one big production number per episode.

Chance of survival
With CBS' 60 Minutes entrenched at the top, the race is for second place. If Hull High can't beat ABC's Life Goes On, its days are numbered.

True Colors
(Fox, 7-7:30 p.m.)

A sitcom whose claim to originality is that it features an interracial marriage. Ron, a black dentist (Frankie Faison), gets hitched to Ellen, a white kindergarten teacher (Stephanie Faracy); each has children from a previous marriage, and the wife brings along added baggage- her mother, ''Grandma Bower,'' played by sitcom vet Nancy Walker (Rhoda). This past season, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd featured a story line about Molly's romance with a black detective, and to the show's credit, the relationship wasn't played for cheap laughs. How will True Colors compare? One's hopes are not raised very high when a Fox press release notes that ''Lester, Ron's 14-year-old rap-talking son, is a constant source of irritation for Grandma Bower.''

Behind the scenes
Although the series is about the new marriage of a black man and a white woman, Fox is relying heavily on the relationship between two other characters — a teenager played by Adam Jeffries and stepgrandmother Walker — to win audiences over. The emphasis may have less to do with good chemistry than with troubled casting-after shooting the pilot, the show's producers decided they needed a different actress to play Faison's wife.

Chance of survival
Sunday nights are pivotal to Fox's success; if True Colors can't lead off the evening successfully, it may move or vanish.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose
(Fox, 7:30-8 p.m.)

This half-hour features Corin Nemec as a wiseguy high-schooler with connections, money, pals, girls, and. . .wait a minute, isn't that the premise of NBC's Ferris Bueller? It certainly is: There are two of these all-knowing-high-schooler sitcoms competing for the youth demographic this season. Some critics are saying that this one is the better of the two, but beyond the fact that Nemec's sneer is a millimeter less annoying than Ferris' Charlie Schlatter's, the distinction would seem to be nonexistent.

Behind the scenes
''We were not unaware of Ferris Bueller,'' says executive producer Clyde Phillips of his remarkably similar new comedy. ''Ferris Bueller was a terrific movie. But to what degree was (Parker Lewis) ripped off? Zero.'' Nevertheless, cowriter Lon Diamond suggests a very Buellerish goal for the series: ''Hopefully, we can present-if you want to say it-a small John Hughes movie every week.'' Other influences for the show include Batman (the campy, garish series, not the movie) and the early '60s cult sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Chance of survival
Fifty-fifty — the kids at Lewis' Santo Domingo High School face a battle with NBC's Hull High to enroll teen viewers.

Lifestories
(NBC, 8-9 p.m.)

Each week, this anthology drama presents us with a main character who has a disease. Lifestories moves through the discovery, diagnosis, and treatment of that disease, offering medical information as accurately as possible. On the one hand, Lifestories wants to attain a near-documentary realism; on the other, it wants to be warm and inviting, so it gives narrator Robert Prosky many folksy things to murmur. As on all anthology shows, the quality will vary widely from week to week, depending on the actors and scripts; the overriding question is whether viewers will want to tune in to a disease-of-the-week series that doesn't feature a regular hero like Marcus Welby or Trapper John.

Behind the scenes
Judging by episode one, maybe they should have called it Deathstories, since that installment ended with its main character, Don Chapin, succumbing to colon cancer. According to NBC, the news won't always be that grim — one upcoming episode will feature Lindsay Crouse (House of Games) and Dwight Schultz (Fat Man and Little Boy) as a fortyish couple who explore the latest in medical technology to conceive a child. But viewers looking for an hour of light entertainment are advised to look elsewhere; a show exploring 47 minutes in the life of a heart attack victim and another about a brain tumor patient are also in the works.

Chance of survival
In TV's toughest time slot — opposite CBS' Murder, She Wrote, ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos, and Fox's In Living Color — the prognosis is bleak. NBC would probably settle for third, but not fourth, place.

Get a Life
(Fox, 8:30-9 p.m.)

A series that promises to be as gratifyingly peculiar as you'd expect from the fellow who used to be the Guy Under the Seats on NBC's Late Night With David Letterman. Chris Elliott stars as a 30- year-old man who still lives with his parents and works as a newspaper delivery boy. Elliott, who also cowrites many of the shows, plays this man-child with his usual unsettling mixture of winsomeness and contempt. He's cast his parents brilliantly: Elinor Donahue (Father Knows Best) is his long- suffering mom, and his real-life father, the delightfully deadpan Bob Elliott, plays his even-longer-suffering dad. Just how long viewers will stay tuned for Elliott's malice-laced nuttiness is anyone's guess, but Get a Life has inherited a prime spot on Fox's schedule: the top-rated Simpsons' old time slot.

Behind the scenes
Chris Elliott gained cult fame on Late Night, but is his bizarre brand of humor ready for prime-time? ''I've always had to deal with the idea that maybe I am a little too dangerous looking or too psychotic looking and acting,'' Elliott told reporters this summer. ''But I think I have found a middle ground. I do not think I have sold out, have I?'' As Elliott's mother, Donahue replaces Lassie's June Lockhart, who was originally set for the role.

Chance of survival
Elliott's edgy humor meshes well with In Living Color, which precedes it. If his Letterman following expands, the future looks bright.

America's Funniest People
(ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.)

ABC devotes a half hour of prime- time to follow up Bob Saget's original with this rip-,um, sequel to America's Funniest Home Videos. How much of a sequel? Well, it's hosted by another Full House cast member, David Coulier, who has lighter hair than Saget and can do more impressions. (Arleen Sorkin is cohost.) Other than that, differences between these two shows will be minimal: Funniest People will feature more stunts and performances, with ordinary folks doing amusing things fully aware that they're being filmed. Thus, at the very least, the humiliation factor in this show should be lower than that on America's Funniest Home Videos

Behind the scenes
Although Home Videos has a semi-strict ban on staged clips, executive producer Vin Di Bona says that clever, carefully planned mini-clips comparable to the Indiana Jones parody seen on AFHV last season are welcome on his new show. For the on-location performance segments of America's Funniest People, camera crews are traveling to 16 different cities. The funniest so far, according to Di Bona: Memphis and Cleveland.

Chance of survival
It follows America's Funniest Home Videos and it / doesn't even have to compete with The Simpsons — if it fails to reach Nielsen's top 20, it's in big trouble.

Good Grief
(Fox, 9:30-10 p.m.)

Years ago, British muckraker Jessica Mitford published a scathingly funny expose of this country's funeral industry, called The American Way of Death. Mitford is nowhere to be found in the credits for this sitcom, but Fox is the only network that might actually permit some of the tone of Mitford's black humor to make it onto television. In Good Grief, a guy and his brother-in-law — one honest (Joel Brooks), one scheming (Howie Mandel) — run the family business, a funeral home. The show is produced and written by Stu Silver, who worked on another black-humor special, the Danny DeVito movie Throw Momma From the Train.

Behind the scenes
Talk about production delays: Good Grief's pilot was written in 1983 and promptly rejected by CBS. ''No network wanted to touch a mortuary comedy then,'' recalls producer (not comedian) David Steinberg. ''But we knew it was good.'' Last year, Silver rewrote the script as a feature film for Orion, but Fox president Barry Diller snapped it up as a TV series. Despite nearly a decade to prepare, Good Grief didn't firm up its cast until late August, when Mandel signed on to star as the get-rich-quick artist Ernie. ''We looked at over 1,000 people,'' Steinberg says. ''We always knew that it would be almost impossible to find Ernie. He's Bilko-a con man you like.''

Chance of survival
It follows Married...With Children, and, says Steinberg, ''we're an excellent match.'' If audiences agree, Fox may solidify its successful block of Sunday comedies.

Against the Law
(Fox, 10-11 p.m.)

Michael O'Keefe (The Great Santini) portrays what Fox describes as ''a rock & roll lawyer.'' What Fox means, apparently, is that O'Keefe's character is a wild-man, an outrageous grandstander who'll do anything to win his clients' cases. O'Keefe has never been a showy, over-the- top type, and there was no pilot available for an advance peek, so it'll be interesting to see how he interprets the role.

Behind the scenes
Fox is known to allow its producers to venture into racier territory than the other networks do, but an episode scheduled for Sept. 30 includes a word — in fact, several words, used several times — previously unheard on network TV. But the obscenities, which come out of the mouth of an Andrew Dice Clay-like comic, won't be heard on Fox either; they'll be bleeped out, a gimmick the producers planned all along.

Chance of survival
Marginal — the show will have to hold its own against three network movies, something no Fox series has done in the 10 p.m. time period.

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Changes in old shows

In network television, pregnant performers make for panicky producers, but when the second season of ABC's Life Goes On begins on Sept. 16, Patti LuPone won't be hiding under bulky sweaters or behind countertops; executive producer Michael Braverman has written her pregnancy into the show's plot. This season's episodes will also find Becca (Kellie Martin) falling into her first teenage romance, but older sister Paige (played last season by Monique Lanier) won't be back in the Thacher household.

America's Funniest Home Videos, 1990's most successful new series, isn't tampering much with its winning formula, but executive producer Vin Di Bona is adding $5,000 in second- and third-place prize money and offering three $100,000 grand prizes that will coincide with ratings sweeps in November, February, and May. And CBS' Murder, She Wrote begins its seventh and final season with a promise that Angela Lansbury, who limited her role last year, will appear in 17 of this season's 22 episodes.