The Week in Review

The U.S. and Soviet Russia are racing to launch the first rocket missile into interplanetary space. But if the statesmen paid more attention to television, they would realize that space adventures are strictly for the birds. Even durable Captain Video has been downgraded to a supporting role in a local show called Wonderama, where he shares billing with a drawing teacher and a cooking instructor. The only planetary wanderer left on the network air is CBS's Captain Midnight, who last week, in the fashion of spacemen everywhere, was locked in combat with the inevitable mad scientist.

This season, animals are all the rage. Alice in Wonderland's sizable audience may have been more fascinated by such strange creatures as the Gryphon, Mock Turtle, March Hare and Cheshire Cat than by such stars as Eva Le Gallienne, Elsa Lanchester, Martyn Green and Gilliam Barber. On one hour of ABC's Mickey Mouse Club last week, moppets saw a succession of wild hares, lemurs, hamsters, pythons, lions, leopards, pumas and sharks. At the same moment, NBC's rival Pinky Lee Show was knee-deep in lions. Lassie and Rin Tin Tin are dedicated to proving that a dog is a boy's best friend. CBS's Champion is about Gene Autry's horse, rather than Gene Autry. The newest kid show, Captain Kangaroo, is crowded with baby chicks, baby squirrels, lambkins, goats and assorted birds. And Kangaroo's Bob Keeshan promises bigger and better quadrupeds as soon as his show is moved to a studio equipped with a large elevator: "Now we're limited to those that can walk--or be carried--upstairs." The animal take-over has been so complete that the new programs employing mostly humans have been tooled to appeal more to adults than children. NBC's Frontier, ABC's Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp and CBS's Adventures of Robin Hood all stiffly announce that, while children are welcome, what they are really seeking is a grown-up audience. As for Hopalong Cassidy, the vanquished king of an earlier TV era, his noble-minded triumphs can now be glimpsed only on local shows. Says one adolescent firmly: "We've seen all his shows five or six times already. That's enough."

At week's end, Police Sergeant Barney Arluck, a contestant on NBC's The Big Surprise, got his chance to be the first man on TV to win $100,000. Instead, faced by a complex legal question prepared by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, he became the first man on TV not to win $100,000. His consolation: $50,000. Big Surprise may improve its low audience rating with the next contestant, sprightly Kyra Shirk, a housewife from York, Pa. who spent the war years as a citizen of Leningrad and a second lieutenant in the Red army. Her subject: wars and weapons.

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