Return of the Wizard

As commercial television hopelessly wrestles again with mediocrity in entertainment, educational TV is at least trying harder. Latest evidence is a new prime-time adult science series, Experiment, now running on 16 major non commercial channels.

Experiment was developed by Don Herbert, 49, producer and star of the children's science program Mr. Wizard.

That show ran on NBC for 14 years and won a number of prestigious awards be fore NBC capriciously dumped it. It turns out now that the kids' loss is the grownups' gain. The opening Experiment and the seven others to follow are modest masterpieces that even the least scientifically minded viewer can find clear and compelling.

Each half-hour program deals expertly with one specific scientific advance and the personality of the pioneer who made it possible. "The scientist becomes a protagonist," says Herbert, "a man with a struggle." The premiere featured Cornell Zoologist Perry Gilbert and his studies on "Attack Patterns of Sharks."

Other shows follow Rockefeller Univer sity Microbiologist James Hirsch on his search for the "Secret of the White Cell," Louisiana Psychologist William Mason in a study of the "Childhood of the Chimpanzee," and Stanford Physi cist Arthur Schawlow on the mysteries of the "Laser -- the Light of the Future."

The most engaging subject is the fourth in the series -- Swarthmore Col lege Astronomer Peter van de Kamp, 64, who in 1963 discovered "Barnard's Star B," the first planet outside the solar system. The program opens with Amateur Composer Van de Kamp at the pi ano, playing one of his own works; then he gets up, kisses his wife goodbye, throws on a scarf, and heads out for a hard night's day at the observatory, where the camera briskly retraces the hours of patient study that led Van de Kamp to his revolutionary discovery.

Simultaneously and without sentimentality, Herbert, who narrates as well as produces Experiment, reveals the whole man -- musician, engaging classroom instructor, collector of old Chaplin films, and gifted home moviemaker.

Not surprisingly, Don Herbert failed when he tried to sell his new series to commercial television. A few ad agen cies and sponsors showed some interest, but they could not entice an appropriate time slot from the big networks. "All those people said they liked it and were sure their families would watch it," recalls Herbert, "but they were just as sure that 'the masses' wouldn't." With a nationwide chain of 105 educational channels scheduled to telecast the Experiment series by next spring, the masses could--and should--prove them wrong.

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