WEEKEND TV : SERIES STARS FEATURED IN A PAIR OF MOVIES

Andy Griffith of NBC’s new “Matlock” series stars in a movie on CBS Sunday, while at the same time Donna Mills of CBS’ “Knots Landing” stars in a movie on NBC. Who says there’s no diversity on commercial television?

Actually, there is considerable diversity in the two films, both of which will be broadcast 9-11 p.m. Griffith’s’ “Under the Influence” (on Channels 2 and 8) is a serious, compelling study of a family unraveling because of the father’s alcoholism; Mills’ “Intimate Encounters” (on Channels 4, 36 and 39) is a shallow exercise in titillation.

Movies about alcoholism are hardly new, but the terrible way that the disease affects individual relationships and entire families can still be the stuff of good drama. “Shattered Spirits” demonstrated that on ABC last January; “Under the Influence” does so again, though not quite as intensely.

The title is two-edged. Griffith is the man under the influence of alcohol and who, in turn, has had a profound influence on his wife (Joyce Van Patten) and four grown children (Paul Provenza, Season Hubley, Keanu Reeves and Dana Andersen), each of whom deals with the pain differently. The performances are first-rate.

There is no heavy-handed moralizing here. Writer Joyce Rebeta-Burditt and director Thomas Carter keep the focus on the characters and their continuing, hopeless quest to win the patriarch’s approval. It’s a penetrating look at the dark side of how families are bound together.

If anything, “Intimate Encounters” is even more earnest than “Under the Influence” in its effort to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible when the premise asks us to feel sorry for a beautiful, wealthy 36-year-old woman with no children and no responsibilities who can’t cope with the fact that her marriage has gone flat.

So little mind does she possess that she gets lost in her fantasies about sexual encounters with strangers and ultimately feels compelled to act them out.

These encounters feature long, caressing closeups of Mills’ bedroom eyes, high-gloss lips and tousled blonde mane. That she is beautiful there is no doubt, but these scenes play less like drama than as advertising for her new home video cassette on how to apply makeup.

This being commercial television, moreover, the trysts consist solely of slow kissing. There is no passion or eroticism and, even worse, she isn’t even allowed to enjoy them momentarily. The one time we see her in bed with another man, she’s crying.

There is even a psychiatrist on hand to warn her that whenever she gets together with a stranger, she’s running the risk of getting a disease, being beaten or being blackmailed.

That makes for a classic double message: Watch the movie because it’ll titillate you with the idea of acting out your sexual fantasies, but please, don’t try it at home.

Meanwhile, ABC will counter these two TV movies with a 1981 theatrical film of some notoriety: “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” also at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

Two other first-run TV movies are scheduled Sunday. Sir John Gielgud stars in a new version of “The Canterville Ghost” at 6 p.m. on Channel 5, while at 7 p.m. “The Disney Sunday Movie” on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) serves up “Hero in the Family,” a comedy in which an astronaut (Cliff De Young) gets trapped inside a chimpanzee’s body.