TELEVISION

Wednesday, July 20

SIBERIA: A DAY IN IRKUTSK (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).*NBC News focuses on the sprawling Siberian city, 2,600 miles from Moscow, a once frontier trade center which now boasts close to 500,000 inhabitants and a building boom. Concentrating on the people who have helped build the city, NBC interviews a woman surgeon and a Trans-Siberian Railroad engineer.

Friday, July 22

SUMMER FUN (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Seven different comedy shows fill in until fall, and the first stars Cliff Arquette as a contraption-inventing druggist in "McNab's Lab."

WAYNE AND SHUSTER TAKE AN AFFECTIONATE LOOK AT THE WESTERNS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). To judge from the number of westerns this week, they picked the proper time.

Saturday, July 23

P.G.A. GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Jack Nicklaus and his buddies knock it around for $150,000 in the last of pro golf's Big Four tournaments, at Firestone Country Club, Akron. Continued on Sunday 5-7 p.m.

Sunday, July 24

DISCOVERY '66 (ABC, 11:30-noon). Off to Kenya's Nairobi National Game Park to examine Africa's vanishing wild life and the efforts being made to preserve it.

SPORTSMAN'S HOLIDAY (NBC, 5:30-6:30 p.m.). The hunt includes "Wyoming, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play" and "Arctic Goose Hunt."

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "Woman Doctor in Viet Nam" tells of Dr. Pat Smith's war against disease among the Montagnard tribesmen in the central highlands. Repeat.

LASSIE (CBS, 7-7:30 p.m.). The doggie-wonder goes it alone with an all-animal cast in this humanless, narrationless, dialogueless Lassie-venture. Repeat.

Tuesday, July 26

CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium." Robert Trout does a study of those "everything included" package tours.

THEATER

Straw Hat As usual, summer theaters consist of young aspiring actors entirely surrounded by a few Broadway veterans and hordes of movie-TV refugees with more or less recognizable names. Some of the names:

OGUNQUIT, ME., Ogunquit Playhouse: Dennis Weaver in the comedy-mystery Catch Me If You Can.

FALMOUTH, MASS., Falmouth Playhouse: The Bronx seeks cooler climes with Gertrude Berg in Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling.

WESTBURY, N.Y., New Westbury Music Fair: Jayne Mansfield adds an exclamation point to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

SYRACUSE, Famous Artist Playhouse: Durward Kirby plays a perplexed father in The Impossible Years, a product of the past Broadway season.

NYACK, N.Y., Tappan Zee Playhouse: June Allyson is trying out a new play called Good-By Ghost.

PHILADELPHIA, Playhouse in the Park: Life with Father starring Tom Ewell as good old Dad.

NEW HOPE, PA., Bucks County Playhouse: The later, but not at all declining years of Eleanor of Aquitaine are chronicled in Lion in Winter, with Colleen Dewhurst as the queen and George C. Scott as King Henry II.

WARREN, OHIO, Kenley Players: Juliet Prowse boop-boop-bee-doops it in The Boy Friend.

KANSAS CITY, MO., Starlight Theater: Betty White plays the role that Judy Holliday made famous in the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing.

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Charlotte Summer Theater: Orson Bean demonstrates How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

ATLANTA, Atlanta Municipal Theater: Jane Morgan high-steps her way through Can Can.

DENVER, Elitch Theater: The theater's most famous relative, Charley's Aunt, this time starring Louis Nye.

WEST COVINA, CALIF., Carousel Theater: Georgia Brown re-creates her Broadway role in Oliver!

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, CALIF., The Valley Music Theater: Jerry Van Dyke is trying his hand at Big Brother Dick's starring role in Bye Bye Birdie.

HOLLYWOOD, Huntington Hartford Theater: Ellis Rabb's Association of Producing Artists revival of You Can't Take It with You, which played to packed houses on Broadway, proving that age is only relatives.

BERKELEY, CALIF., Ben Kapen's Melodyland: Leslie Uggams in The Boy Friend.

CINEMA

WALK, DON'T RUN. Stepping lightly out of his customary Romeo role, Gary Grant plays matchmaker for Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton. The trio squeezes winning high comedy from a wheezy plot about crowded housing in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Two faculty couples turn an after-hours party into a marital Armageddon, with the same corrosive language used in Edward Albee's Broadway hit. As hosts, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor make a sizzling night of it.

THE ENDLESS SUMMER. In a documentary that captures the appeal of a dangerous and dazzling sport, two skillful young surfers search for the perfect wave on a round-the-world tour.

THE NAKED PREY. Director-Star Cornel Wilde is the quarry hunted by native warriors in a stirring, single-minded African adventure drama, uncluttered with fainthearted blondes or false heroics.

BORN FREE. Another African saga, based on Joy Adamson's book about Elsa the lioness. The cat cast is in top form.

AND NOW MIGUEL. Sheep ranching in New Mexico generates excitement for the boy hero of a juvenile film by the makers of Island of the Blue Dolphins and Misty.

LE BONHEUR. The Prince Charming of Director Agnes Varda's wry fairy tale about infidelity is a rather impulsive carpenter (Jean-Claude Drouot) who drives his wife to suicide and happily settles down with his mistress.

MANDRAGOLA. Some Renaissance types carry out plots against the virtue of a Florentine beauty (Rosanna Schiaffino).

"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING." A Soviet submarine bumps aground on a tight little island off the New England coast, causing a hilarious invasion panic that is at its funniest when Broadway's Alan Arkin dominates the action as an unstrung Russian sailor.

BOOKS

Best Reading

LOVE'S BODY, by Norman O. Brown. As a follow-up to his Life Against Death, which has become an undergraduate's delight. University of Rochester Professor Brown offers further Freudian ruminations on his theory that mankind's greatest enemy is sexual repression.

TRIUMPH OR TRAGEDY: REFLECTIONS ON VIETNAM, by Richard N. Goodwin. One of the young brain-stormers for President Kennedy and, until recently, for President Johnson, Goodwin examines U.S. policy in Viet Nam in a way that is often critical but concludes that the U.S. must commit whatever force is needed to clear the guerrillas from the countryside.

JAMES BOSWELL: THE EARLIER YEARS, by Frederick A. Pottle. Johnson's Boswell comes stunningly to life in this warm portrait of a rakish genius.

THE BIG KNOCKOVER, by Dashiell Hammett. In a collection of his early detective stories, the late founding father of the tough-guy school of fiction proves that he is still at the head of his class.

JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM, by Gideon Hausner. Having prosecuted Adolf Eichmann in Israel, Hausner here successfully prosecutes him again in print.

MR. CLEMENS AND MARK TWAIN, by Justin Kaplan. The best humor has a cutting edge, and Kaplan's able biography explains the bitterness and cynicism that underlay everything Mark Twain wrote.

ARIEL, by Sylvia Plath. Author Plath, who committed suicide at 30, wrote a mass of morbid but powerful poetry in the last few months of her unhappy life, and in the three years since her death has become the most celebrated woman poet of her generation.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (1 last week)

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. The Source, Michener (4)

4. Tai-Pan, Clavell (3)

5. Tell No Man, St. Johns (5)

6. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (7)

7. The Double Image, Maclnnes (6)

8. Those Who Love, Stone (8)

9. I, the King, Keyes (9) 10. The Mission, Habe (10)

NONFICTION 1. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (1)

2. The Last Battle, Ryan (3)

3. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (2)

4. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson (4)

5. In Cold Blood, Capote (5)

6. Games People Play, Berne (7)

7. The Crusades, Oldenbourg (10)

8. Churchill, Moran (6)

9. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (8) 10. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (9)

* All times E.D.T.

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