Lindsay as Callie Lord Bordeaux.

 NOT too long ago, the giving of a full three hours of prime time to a television movie used to signify something special, something along the ambitious lines of, say, ''Friendly Fire.'' In no time at all, however, the three-hour production has become nothing more than a convenient way to fill a schedule desperate for fresh material. There is certainly nothing even remotely special about ''Callie & Son,'' the peculiar melodrama that CBS-TV has chosen to show from 8 to 11 this evening.

The project features some promising credits. The script, toying with the evergreen subjects of money and power in Texas, was written by Thomas Thompson, author of the best-selling ''Blood and Money.'' The director is Waris Hussein, whose outstanding achievements for British television include ''The Six Wives of Henry VIII.'' And the star is Lindsay Wagner, who, after attracting attention as ''The Bionic Woman,'' gained some prestige in such productions as ''Scruples'' and ''The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel.''

The story even begins with some development potential. Young and poor Callie Lord (Miss Wagner) is being forced to give up for adoption her illegitimate son at birth. Moving from the country to Dallas, Callie makes a lifelong friend in Jeannie (Joy Garrett), who gets her a job as a waitress. But Callie is determined to be something more. She spends most of her evenings reading in bed and takes a course in court reporting. At the same time, she never forgets that lost son, going so far as to hire a private investigator to look for him.

It's at this point that the story begins to veer out of control. Callie meets and is rapidly married to Randall Bordeaux (Dabney Coleman), a powerful newspaper publisher. After she suffers a serious miscarriage, he helps her track down and get back her son, now about 12 years old. Then Randall, already depressed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, is gunned down by a madman who shoots up the newspaper's offices. His widow, determined that her son Randy will inherit the publishing empire, takes over the editorship.

Skipping several more years, Randy (Jameson Parker) is turning into a rather ordinary young man who is not likely to meet his mother's extraordinary expectations. She is devoting her life to him in a manner that is clearly meant to signal incestuous longings. She even rejects a proposal of marriage from an old and valued friend. When Randy winds up marrying a pouting sexpot (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose past includes some pornography ripe for blackmailing, Callie sets in motion a thoroughly unbelievable chain of events that ends with her son being executed for a murder he didn't commit. As we leave Callie sitting in her sleek limousine, she is being handed a new baby in swaddling clothes while the narrator hopes that ''maybe she'll do better this time.''

Mr. Hussein's direction keeps matters moving as briskly and smoothly as could possibly be expected under the circumstances. The script strives for a tony veneer by quoting everybody from Freud to the late House Speaker Sam Rayburn. Miss Wagner begins with what seems like admirable understatement, but this gradually settles into a kind of chronic one-note gloominess, also perfectly understandable under the circumstances. ''Callie & Son'' represents a mountain of a production giving birth to a Texas gnat.

JOHN J. O'CONNOR, The New York Times