PREMIERES--The fall TV season continues to arrive...

PREMIERES--The fall TV season continues to arrive piecemeal, and this week it’s NBC’s turn to put some cards on the table.

Three new series begin this week on the once-hapless network whose prime-time schedule last season passed ABC and rocketed to second place in the Nielsen ratings behind CBS.

First comes Robert Blake as the convict-turned-ghetto priest in the unpreviewed dramatic series “Hell Town,� 9 p.m. Wednesday on Channels 4, 36 and 39. Blake is Father “Hardstep� Rivers, now a pastor of the parish whose orphanage took him in as a child, and here determined to rescue a prostitute from her abusive pimp.

On Saturday, NBC unveils two promising comedies. The first, at 9 p.m., is “The Golden Girls,� a half-hour series featuring Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty as over-50 housemates. Good cast. Good lines.

That’s followed at 9:30 by “227,� starring Marla Gibbs (“The Jeffersons�) as a feisty neighbor in a feisty working-class neighborhood. Gibbs is fun and gets good support from Hal Williams, Alaina Reed and Jackee Harry.

Making its debut at 8 p.m. Tuesday on KTLA Channel 5 is the two-hour pilot for the syndicated “Dempsey & Makepeace.� American Michael Brandon and British Glynis Barber team as Scotland Yard undercover cops in a stinker of a series from London Weekend Television that proves that the British can create TV that’s as bad as some of ours.

On the cable front, Home Box Office premieres a two-part historical drama Sunday night at 8, its own “Mussolini: The Decline and Fall of Il Duce,� starring Bob Hoskins as the Italian dictator who helped bring his nation to ruin as Hitler’s ally in World War II. The cast is first-rate, the production watchable but undistinguished. The conclusion airs Monday at 8 p.m.

On Saturday at 8 p.m. Showtime brings America the smashing Pointer Sisters in an energetic concert from Paris. So jump !