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''THIS is not a television show - this is reality,'' Parker Stevenson, who is O'Keefe, says to Billy Dee Williams, who is Hawke. They are careening around corners in a Mercedes, trying to shake off pursuit. No matter what they say, however, this is still television. The two-hour ABC movie, ''Shooting Stars,'' will be seen tonight at 9 o'clock.

O'Keefe and Hawke are two television actors bounced from a police series because the star of the series (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) thinks that they are stealing the show. O'Keefe and Hawke, experienced by 58 episodes as cops, decide to become private detectives. Mostly, they need to make a living. They own a restaurant, the Nantucket Light, which is losing money. Nantucket, incidentally, has nothing to do with anything. The restaurant is in Southern California.

O'Keefe and Hawke go to work on a case too complex to be easily explained. It does, however, involve missing persons, young women in bikinis, crooked cops, a nasty real-estate developer, an environmental scandal, an exploding automobile and finally, and rather excitingly, too, a helicopter chase. The helicopters fly under bridges and around smokestacks. Then one of them smacks into a building.

Aside from the opening sequence, which is hokey, there is not much gratuitous violence, although O'Keefe and Hawke do get beaten up. Meanwhile, they remain the best of buddies. Mr. Stevenson has something like an ingenue role, although to make it clear that he is no longer in ''The Hardy Boys,'' his character gets to have a divorced wife, alimony problems and a daughter he loves but does not see as much as he should.

Mr. Williams's character is the smoother of the two, and at the end he gets to fly the helicopter. He also tells the one surviving villain that one of these days he is going to get him. Presumably, someone is thinking of turning this into a series.