Baby boomers are entering their 40s while their parents join America's growing ranks of senior citizens. That's why we're likely to see more miserable TV movies like "Fire in the Dark" as the months and years go by.

Despite the networks' accelerated drive to attract younger viewers, a TV program that can capture the boomer and senior audiences will pull big ratings. CBS, known for "skewing older" with its programming, continues to gain positive results by courting viewers older than 35.

"Fire in the Dark," a cold-blooded tearjerker airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on WBBM-Channel 2, pushes many of the CBS demographic buttons. The morally corrupt melodrama, starring Olympia Dukakis, Lindsay Wagner, Edward Herrmann, Ray Wise, George Hearn and Jean Stapleton, is designed to soothe the age-related fears of boomers and seniors.

Unlike "Mrs. Lambert Remembers Love," a better CBS movie that aired on Mother's Day last spring, "Fire in the Dark" looks at the plight of an elderly woman from the point of view of her 40-something daughter and son. Dukakis gives a heart-tugging performance as aging widow Emily Miller, a retired teacher who begins to falter after she breaks her hip. Wagner and Herrmann sway between sentimentality and selfishness as jealous siblings who put their personal interests ahead of their mother's welfare.

In "Mrs. Lambert," Ellen Burstyn played a rattled grandmother in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. She needed professional care. But the proud Emily in Sunday's movie still has a sharp mind. She could get by if her daughter and son would make room for her in their lives.

Writer David J. Hill and director David Jones suggest that an old woman's place is in the home - a rest home, a nursing home, a retirement home - anywhere but the home of a family member. Lifestyles are more important than parent-child bonds, the movie contends. Find a safe, pleasant, affordable place for Mom, sell her house and belongings to pay for her care, and everyone will be happier. So they say.

Family members are reconciled by accepting a handy rationalization in this sorry CBS fairy tale. But viewers with functioning hearts and minds will draw no comfort from "Fire in the Dark" and its smoke-blowing conclusion.