TV REVIEWS : ‘Torch Song’ Ignites Rehabilitating Love

Never let it be said that high-society-minded writer Judith Krantz fails to evince sympathy for the plight of the blue-collar worker. In “Torch Song” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC, Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), she evidences plenty of empathy for the plight of the blue-collar worker who just happens to have fallen in love with one of the glitziest, booziest middle-aged stars in Hollywood at an exclusive desert rehab center.

“The Liz ‘n’ Larry Story”? No sauce, Sherlock; only the absence of Michael Jackson’s zoo animals to set the scene at the climactic wedding disappoints in the “Not Real Tabloid Events but an Incredible Simulation” category.

Raquel Welch turns in a spectacularly lurid performance as movie star Paula Eastman, who looks fab -ulous but can’t get a job because of her straight-from-the-bottle binges. Her drunk scenes--with Welch exaggeratedly stumbling around Hollywood in the kind of red dress that only a fitness video maker could melt into--are a campy gas, but the “Valley of the Dolls”-style hilarity doesn’t last long, as the heroine’s nervous teen daughter drives her to seek help early in the telepic.

Then a different kind of kitschy fun starts up: the romance. Jack Scalia is Mike, the noble salt-o’-the-earth fireman who will be the lonely star’s savior. When he doesn’t know where Welch lives, wishing to rekindle the mutual sparks ignited in those therapeutic rap sessions, he stops at a newsstand and buys a Map to the Stars’ Homes.

Once inside her manse, they make mad, fire-lit love to Nat King Cole, with the camera panning across a condom tray the morning after, one package torn open to assuage audience fears of non-safety. “Better than Warren?” he asks her playfully of his nonstar performance. “Better than Jack Nicholson?”

Better than Danielle? Better than Jackie Collins? You betcha, guilty pleasureholics.