WORTH NOTING ON TV
THURSDAY Stolen Babies (Lifetime channel, 9-11 p.m.): Mary Tyler Moore stars in a fact-based, made-for-TV movie about the Tennessee Children's Home Society in the 1940s. She plays the manipulative woman who heads the home, an apparently public-spirited figure who turns out to be buying and selling babies to supply her wealthy clientele. The county welfare worker who suspects wrong-doing is played by Annie Beales, and Kathleen Quinlan is the adoptive mother who helps her investigate. It's a long time since M s. Moore was limited to comedy sitcoms in the public mind. Since `The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' she has won awards for roles in harrowing stage, TV, and film dramas. In this performance she is simply walking further down that path. FRIDAY
... talking With David Frost
(PBS, 9-10 p.m.): The skillful interviewer with his deceptively avuncular style will be put to the test this time, having lined up three men whose views will have a lot to do with the future of South Africa. Interviewed separately, they are (in order of appearance): Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress; Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party; and President Frederik de Klerk of the ruling National Party. These three are in the process of trying to steer n egotiations on a power structure that would politically empower South Africa's black majority, while retaining a say for the white minority. SATURDAY Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros. (TNT, 8-10 p.m.): It's the film studio that made `Casablanca,' `The Big Sleep,' and other permanent fixtures in America's pop culture - more than 100 productions in all. Busby Berkeley choreographed `Forty-Second Street' and `Gold Diggers of 1933' for it. Its stars were legendary - from Bogart to Bette Davis to Porky Pig. Interviews, film clips, and old footage are part of this special, whose lineup of hosts is impressive: Chevy Chase, Clint Eastwood, Barbra St reisand, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg.
Please check local listings for all programs.