WORTH NOTING ON TV
* SATURDAY
Tyson (HBO, 8-10 p.m.): The impressive boxing career and troubled life of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has been made into an interesting if unsatisfying production.
As ''Iron'' Mike, Michael Jai White conveys the turbulent feelings that led the young sensation from the pinnacle of sports success (the production includes some grisly prizefight scenes) to a prison sentence. George C. Scott is powerfully convincing as legendary trainer Cus D'Amato, who took the 13-year-old Tyson under his wing and became his father figure.
Although the roots of Tyson's problems are never fully exposed, viewers do get a much more rounded picture of the fighter's world than scattered media coverage tends to convey.
* SUNDAY
Buffalo Girls (CBS, 9-11 p.m.): That ''girls'' in the title can be excused, because it's a historical reference, and any whiff of sexism will be forcibly dispelled for viewers by the women themselves, authentic figures whom no one is likely to accuse of deferring to men.
Take the main character -- Calamity Jane. She was a frontier scout and mule-skinner who cracked a bullwhip, passed herself off as a man (easily), and helped the cavalry chase down Sitting Bull. Annie Oakley, another of the many historical characters, was a better shot than 99 out of 100 men -- even in the Old West -- and took guff from no one.
The sometimes bawdy four-hour miniseries, adapted from the best-selling novel by Larry McMurtry, covers 10 years in the waning days of the American West and even makes it to London, where Buffalo Bill Cody takes his Wild West show to perform for Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee.
Calamity Jane is played by Anjelica Huston, who won an Emmy Award nomination for her role as Clara Allen in the 1989 miniseries ''Lonesome Dove,'' an adaptation of another McMurtry work. Country singer Reba McEntire is Oakley, Peter Coyote plays Buffalo Bill, and Russell Means is Sitting Bull. Part 2 airs Monday, 9-11 p.m.
Please check local listings for these programs.
