PASADENA, Calif. -- Two TV movies straight out of the '80s premiere this weekend. Ladies, put on your leg warmers and shoulder pads before tuning in. Gentlemen, forgo shaving and throw on a T-shirt and blazer before sitting down to watch. It's time to be a cultural anthropologist.

'MRS. HARRIS'

HBO peels back the layers of the first great scandal of the "greed is good" decade, that courtroom sensation, "the Scarsdale Diet murder." Ben Kingsley stars as Dr. Herman "Hy" Tarnower, author of "The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet," whose death at the hands of his lover, private school headmistress Jean Harris (Annette Bening), became the stuff of scandal.

Did she kill Hy accidentally in a botched suicide attempt? Or, as the prosecution contended, was Harris guilty of pre-meditated murder brought on by jealousy over his relationship with a younger woman?

"Mrs. Harris" (8 p.m. Saturday) depicts the crime both ways, but it's not as interested in Harris' trial as it is in the relationship between the occasionally boisterous Hy and the drug-addicted Jean, who grows more possessive through the years of their relationship (they never married).

"I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I guess we were both in a state of shock," Harris says of the shooting, "wondering how something that ugly and sad could happen between two people who didn't argue -- except over the use of the subjunctive."

"Mrs. Harris" is interesting but not intimate. It's cold, aloof and distant, much like the relationship it depicts between the principal characters.

At an HBO press conference last month, director Phyllis Nagy said she sees the film as "a very, very dark comedy."

Nagy said the real-life Harris, whom she spoke with before making the movie, has a dry sense of humor that informed her writing and the movie's tone. Nagy told Harris, "I haven't gone out of my way to portray Hy Tarnower as an irredeemable bastard."

Harris' reply, per Nagy: "Well, he was a bit of an irredeemable bastard."

"She maintains that sort of distance, and I think that's the kind of distance one needs to walk that line with that humor," Nagy said. "So the script is informed on every level by it."

'FRIENDS & CROCODILES'

A better bet, despite a baffling "That's it?" conclusion, BBC America's "Friends & Crocodiles" (10 p.m. Saturday) explores the co-dependent relationship between wealthy maverick Paul Reynolds (Damian Lewis, "Band of Brothers") and his personal assistant, Lizzie (Jodhi May).

They meet in 1981 when Paul hires her to help him manage his affairs, which includes an estate full of oddball artists, writers and thinkers who live off his largesse.

Paul, a Gatsby-like character, craves control and loves to jerk Lizzie around. If she tells him to drive a double-decker bus only on the main roads and he promises to comply, it's assured he'll break that promise and get the bus stuck in a field within minutes. Paul does this to Lizzie time and again, even after she quits and her fortunes rise while his wane.

Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff ("The Lost Prince"), "Friends & Crocodiles" glides through the years as Paul and Lizzie encounter one another over and over. It's not a conventional love story -- there are hints of romantic tension between the pair, but nothing comes of it -- but the two do have a bond.

"It's the story of two people who have worked together and respect one another over a period of 20 years, who love and hate each other in equal measure at different times," Lewis said at a BBC America press conference last month in Pasadena, Calif. He described "Friends & Crocodiles" as the story of a woman and a man who plays a significant role in her life even though they were never romantic. "It's a powerful and complex relationship and a fulfilling one, stimulating one to have in one's life. ... What you have is a friendship with all its complexity that is not the one you have with your immediate partner. So I think it explores that as well in a very sophisticated and rather grown-up way."