William Friedkin, director of those stylish hard-action...

William Friedkin, director of those stylish hard-action films “The French Connection” and “To Live and Die in L.A.,” moves to TV with C.A.T. Squad (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.), a two-hour movie (and series pilot) about an elite government counterattack squad. Former Rams football star Jack Youngblood stars.

Also airing Sunday at 9 p.m. are two TV movies in repeats: Missing Children: A Mother’s Story (CBS), in which Mare Winningham shines as an illiterate, poverty-stricken young mother of three betrayed by an unscrupulous adoption agency; and For Lovers Only (ABC), a misfired romantic comedy set in a honeymoon resort. Best bet is the Anthony Mann-James Stewart Western, The Man From Laramie (Channel 9 Sunday at 8 p.m.).

Airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on Channel 5, Reckless is a failed small-town drama, but it does introduce Aidan Quinn, who showed promise despite being stuck in a trite Brando-Dean role.

Despite a sometimes rickety TV movie-of-the-week plot, I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (NBC Monday at 9 p.m.) boasts intense and convincing performances from Jill Clayburgh as a TV documentarian hooked on Valium and Nicol Williamson as the ominous man in her life.

More of Kevin Brownlow’s remarkable Unknown Chaplin unreels as Part 3 airs on Channel 28 Monday at 9 p.m.

Martin Scorsese’s gritty, disturbing Taxi Driver shows up on Channel 11 Monday at 9 p.m., and David O. Selznick’s delirious but entertaining Duel in the Sun airs Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 5.

Made in 1969, Battle of Britain (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is the kind of old-fashioned war picture that’s getting harder and harder to enjoy, overwhelmed as it is by logistics that become more important than its people (which include Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine and Ralph Richardson, among many others).

The Undefeated (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is a routine Western starring John Wayne as a Union colonel and Rock Hudson as a Confederate colonel in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a much-loved, mellow and reflective Western in which Peckinpah managed to persuade Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea to face the cameras one last time (in 1962) before retiring. They’re old gunfighters who sign on to guard a gold shipment; along the way they meet Mariette Hartley (in a notable screen debut).

Ira Levin had a best seller in The Boys From Brazil (Channel 11 Thursday at 9 p.m.), but as a film the eerie notion of cloning a whole generation of teen-age Hitlers from the long-dead original becomes more preposterous the longer the plot unravels. Still, Gregory Peck’s Josef Mengele lingers in the mind as a portrait of pure, terrifying evil--even more so than Laurence Olivier’s Simon Wiesenthal-like Nazi hunter.

The Bridge at Remagen (Channel 13 Friday at 8 p.m.) is another tritely ironic Hollywood-style World War II fantasy. This 1969 release finds George Segal, Ben Gazzara, Robert Vaughn and E. G. Marshall in the final gory stages of the war in Europe.

For more than 20 years--and on three continents--Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant, American-born director James Ivory and German-born writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have made a series of high-quality, small-scale movies, frequently from literary classics. Channel 28 will present their subtle and exquisite version of Henry James’ The Europeans Friday at 9 p.m., followed at 10:30 p.m. by The Wandering Company, a documentary on the three film makers. One of their earliest successes, Shakespeare Wallah, a romance set against a struggling Shakespeare company touring India, airs Saturday at 11 p.m. on Channel 28.

The 1982 production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Anthony Hopkins in the title role, plays again Saturday at 9 p.m. on CBS. Derek Jacobi, Lesley-Anne Down, John Gielgud, Robert Powell and Tim Pigott-Smith are others in starring roles.

Robert Conrad stars as a family man suffering a mid-life crisis in the so-so 1983 TV movie, Confessions of a Married Man (ABC Saturday at 9 p.m.).

Selected evening cable fare: Man of Flowers (Bravo Sunday at 8:30); Monkey Grip (Bravo Monday at 8); Wartime Romance (Z Tuesday at 7); Kamilla (Bravo Wednesday at 8:30); Bye Bye Brazil (Galavision Wednesday at 9:30); Ivan the Terrible (AE Thursday at 9); Bunuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid (Bravo Friday at 8); The Fourth Man (Bravo Saturday at 9).