NBC (9-11 p.m. ET)
Claptrap has rarely been as elegantly packaged as it is in this lavish miniseries from Judith (Scruples) Krantz's 1980 best-seller. There hasn't been such a sumptuous wallow since the 1950s heyday of producer Ross (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession) Hunter. No sooner does Lindsay Wagner meet Stacy Keach's Russian prince than they're the parents of identical twin girls—Daisy and Dani—and Keach is pretending to Wagner that Dani (born retarded) is dead. And that's just for openers. The grown-up Daisy must cope with the secret of her sister, a half-brother, Ram (Krantz has a gift for names), who rapes her and steals her fortune, and two letches (Paul Michael Glaser and Robert Urich) who use her ads as a shill for a cosmetics firm. Whew! Wagner, Keach and Claudia Cardinale (as Keach's mistress) are standouts. Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach add spice as a bisexual married couple; she paints his toenails. In the pivotal Daisy role, newcomer Merete Van Kamp proves that what she lacks in acting experience she makes up for in bone structure. She's a knockout.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
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