The 1981 Bustin’ Loose (KTLA Sunday at...

The 1981 Bustin’ Loose (KTLA Sunday at 6 p.m.), with Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson, is a highly uneven comedy. But it’s so ingratiating at times that you may be able to forgive it for falling apart two-thirds of the way through. Pryor plays an ex-con driving a busload of eight emotionally disturbed children cross-country, accompanied by their teacher (Tyson).

Jerry Belson’s 1987 Surrender (KTLA Sunday at 8 p.m.) is a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy that’s better when it’s serious than when it’s trying to be funny. Sally Field stars as a struggling artist with a rich but egotistical younger lover (Steve Guttenberg). And then she meets Michael Caine’s women-wary mystery writer during a museum holdup.

In the disappointing 1991 comedy Doc Hollywood (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.), Michael J. Fox plays a hotshot Washington, D.C., plastic surgeon headed for Beverly Hills when he’s unexpectedly detained in a small South Carolina town, which, by the way, has an urgent need for a doctor.

There’s a temptation to subtitle Places in the Heart (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.) “Norma Rae Plants Cotton.” Sally Field once again plays a scrappy rural woman learning to stand up for herself and her family. Even though overly familiar, Robert Benton’s 1984 saga of small-town Texas life in the 1930s is deeply felt.

After a hiatus of more than six years, Robert Blake resumed his career impressively in the outstanding 1993 TV movie Judgment Day: The John List Story (CBS Tuesday at 9 p.m.). Here, the actor’s characteristic intensity illuminates the sullen, twisted title character, a meek New Jersey accountant who slaughtered his family in 1971 and managed to live a secret life for 18 years.

Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) is a deliciously sophisticated 1978 update of the 1941 fantasy “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” one that preserves the lyrical optimism of the original. Beatty produced, co-authored (with Elaine May) and co-directed (with Buck Henry) this handsome film in which he stars as a pro football quarterback whose death is untimely in every sense and who gets two more tries at earthly pleasures. Henry plays Beatty’s incompetent guardian angel, and Julie Christie is the woman he loves in every incarnation.