Beatles fans of even the most casual stripe will enjoy "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" (Sunday, 8 p.m., NBC/Ch. 5), a bright, entertaining romp through the icon's formative years — albeit with dark undertones.
Covering Lennon from the ages of 16-24 and shot entirely on location in Liverpool, England, it covers territory that's familiar to a lot of people, but a good story is a good story, no matter how many times you tell it. And the producers of "In His Life" made an excellent choice in casting their lead — Irish actor Phillip McQuillan doesn't necessarily look a whole lot like the real Lennon, but he certainly captures his spirit.
And, within a few minutes, you'll probably forget that the physical resemblance isn't all that great.
The telefilm opens by focusing exclusively on Lennon — his troubled family life, his trouble in school, his overwhelming desire to be involved in music. And Lennon remains at the forefront as "In His Life" becomes more about the birth of the Beatles.
The actors playing the other Beatles — Daniel McGowan as Paul McCartney, Mark Rice-Oxley as George Harrison, Kristian Ealey as Ringo Starr, along with Lee Williams as Stuart Sutcliffe and Scot Williams as Pete Best — are all adequate, if unremarkable. However, Blair Brown shines as Lennon's difficult, perpetually negative Aunt Mimi.
"In His Life" can get hokey at times — like when Lennon receives inspiration for everything from "Penny Lane" to "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "Eleanor Rigby" seemingly within a matter of minutes. But there's lots of great music (16 songs) and plenty of energy to keep this an altogether watchable TV movie.
Papa's Angels: A Christmas Story (Sunday, 8 p.m., CBS/Ch. 2), on the other hand, is a well-intentioned movie that's so slow moving it's tough to sit through.
Scott Bakula, Cynthia Nixon and Eve Marie Saint star in this telefilm about a poor Appalachian family that, despite their hardships, is a happy one. That is, until tragedy strikes, and one of the family members passes on, leaving sadness and bitterness behind.
It won't be giving anything away to let you know that, in the end, there is a triumph of the spirit — this is, after all, a TV Christmas movie. And "Papa's Angels" isn't a bad movie.
It's just a slow, predictable one.
Queer as Folk (Sunday, 11 p.m., Showtime) is as far to the other end of the TV spectrum as it could be; a frank, even shocking, new series about a group of gay friends living in Pittsburgh.
Based on the British series of the same name — the title comes from a Yorkshire proverb that there's nothing queer as folk, meaning, people are strange — there's a lot of good writing and acting here. Producers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman ("Sisters") have created a core group of believable characters to identify with — all gay and most open about it. Michael (Hal Sparks), a 29-year-old discount-store assistant manager, is the nice guy at the center of the group. He has a longtime crush on his longtime best friend, Brian (Gale Harold), a successful advertising executive who doesn't believe in love and might be described as a sexual predator. Then there's 17-year-old Justin (Randy Harrison) — yes, he's 17 — who doesn't wait to enter the scene and falls for Brian.
The group also includes the rather flamboyant Emmett (Peter Paige), and the repressed Ted (Scott Lowell). And a lesbian couple (Melanie Clunie and Thea Gill) raising a newborn that was fathered by Brian.
It's about love and sex and relationships and friendship, pretty much like any other show. Except that almost all of the characters are gay.
This is definitely not for everyone. "Queer as Folk" deserves its TV-MA ratings — the television equivalent of an R — and there is more explicit gay sex here than television has ever seen before. (And the gay sex scenes are often more explicit than their straight sex-scene counterparts on other cable series like "Sex and the City.")
Showtime is hoping this will be a "signature series" like HBO's "The Sopranos" and has ordered 22 hourlong episodes.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com