There was a time, and not that long ago, when CBS might have aired a movie biography like “Coco Chanel” (7 p.m., today, Lifetime). Instead, we get Julie Chen hosting “Big Brother XCIX.” In fact, just a few years back, CBS aired a fashion epic of a different stripe, starring Shirley MacLaine as the founder of Mary Kay cosmetics. It was a hip, smart hoot, and the kind of ratings disaster that killed the network TV movie.

MacLaine returns to star in the title role of “Coco Chanel.” Or at least half. She plays the older Chanel making a fashion comeback in a Paris of an indeterminate decade. The press material for the film says it’s supposed to be 1954, but it’s not terribly clear from the movie.

Chanel resists her business manager’s (Malcolm McDowell) insistence that she sell her business and her name and retire. She fights, instead, to put out one more legendary collection. She also spends a lot of time in flashback mode, thinking of her younger self (Barbora Bobulova), who graduated from abandoned convent girl to an imaginative seamstress and then the lover of a nobleman and cad, Etienne (Sagamore Stevenin).

Young Chanel leaves him to starve and create, the path of all true artists – at least in movies. And she’s fortunate to find a patron and lover in Etienne’s best friend, Boy Capel (Olivier Sitruk), a rich industrialist who backs her as she goes on to revolutionize women’s wear in the years before and after World War I.

More of a love story than a biography, “Chanel” is rather slow to build up steam. Viewers who don’t mind watching a two-hour movie stretched out to three will admire the attractive scenery, costumes, landscapes and interior decoration. In the end, it’s not terribly easy to warm to either young or old Chanel.

The film emphatically omits Chanel’s life during the 1940s, when she lived in Paris in the Ritz Hotel during the German occupation and took a Nazi officer (and reported spy) as her lover. It would be hard for any cable network to find much romance in that.

The film is a bold move for Lifetime and a marketing coup, as well. It demonstrates how Chanel married material and necessity to inspire some of her greatest creations. During the privations of World War I, young Chanel uses an ordinary fabric like jersey to luxurious ends. Later, she turns a curtain fabric into a luxurious scarf. “Coco Chanel” proves that long before “Project Runway,” geniuses were making do with what they had. “Project Runway” moves to Lifetime early in 2009.

¢ “Saturday Night Live” (10:30 p.m., NBC) returns for a new season, featuring Michael Phelps as host and Lil Wayne as musical guest. “MADtv” (10 p.m., Fox) also returns, with an emphasis on politics and parody as the presidential election enters its final two months.

Today’s highlights

¢ Jeremy London and Lexa Doig star in the 2008 shocker “Ba’al: The Storm God” (8 p.m., Sci FI).

¢ The tear in time’s fabric presents a whole new kind of terror on the first-season finale of “Primeval” (8 p.m., BBC America).

Sunday’s highlights

¢ Bill rescues Sookie from a tight spot on “True Blood” (8 p.m., HBO).

¢ Peggy’s parish priest thinks she has something unique to contribute to the congregation on “Mad Men” (9 p.m., AMC).