Television's finest hours seem to come when everyone focuses hotly on the same event. Tuesday, Nov. 8, is Election Day, and all three networks will be there competing from 7 p.m. on with their top correspondents and most expensive computers.

Wednesday, November 2 SHIPSTADS AND JOHNSON ICE FOLLIES (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Agent 86 (Don Adams) will be on hand as host to Smarten up this year's Folly.

ABC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Music and lyrics by the Fiddlers on the Roof, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, add new dimensions to Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, featuring Sir Michael Redgrave, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Natalie Schafer. Tippy Walker and Peter (Herman of the Hermits) Noone.

Friday, November 4

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (ABC, 7:30-10 p.m.). The first ABC movie special, The Bridge on the River Kwai, unhorsed Bonanza in the Nielsen race, and now the network is gunning for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Sam Goldwyn's 1952 story of the fairy-tale-teller, starring Danny Kaye, Farley Granger and Jeanmaire.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Robert Vaughn and David McCallum are called in to rescue the wife (Diana Hyland) of a Senator with presidential aspirations when Thrush agents decide to program her brain for their wave length.

Saturday, November 5

ANIMAL SECRETS (NBC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Dr. Loren Eiseley examines the story of life on earth--how it began, multiplied and advanced from simple one-celled organisms to man.

THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY SPECIAL (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). More on evolution. "Dr. Leakey and the Dawn of Man" deals with Anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey and his family of fossil hunters in East Africa. After more than 30 years, the Leakeys have made such finds as Zinjanthropus, a manlike creature believed to have lived 1,750,000 years ago, and the 2,000,000-year-old Homo habilis, who was found among some of the earliest signs of "culture," and is believed to be a direct ancestor of modern man.

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The All-Ireland Hurling championship from Dublin, and the National Air Races in Reno.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:15 p.m.). Roman Holiday (1953), all about a princess (Audrey Hepburn) on a good-will tour who slips out for a fling and finds a willing guide (Gregory Peck).

MISS TEENAGE AMERICA PAGEANT (CBS, 10-11:30 p.m.). For those who have been wondering what the younger generation is coining to.

Sunday, November 6

LAMP UNTO MY FEET (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). "Jephthah's Daughter," an original ballet featuring Carmen de Lavallade and the John Butler Dancers.

LOOK UP AND LIVE (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). The first of a four-part series on

"Africa and the Church" examines churchstate relations on the Ivory Coast, focusing on the problems of integrating tribal groups into one community.

FACE THE NATION (CBS, 12:30-1 p.m.). Edmund ("Pat") Brown, California's incumbent Democratic Governor, is the guest.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 1-,1:30 p.m.). More politics, with Senators Warren G. Maenuson (for the Democras), Thruston B. Morton (for the Republicans).

THE ETERNAL LIGHT (NBC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Pauline Frederick interviews famed Yiddish Novelist and Storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer.

ISSUES AND ANSWERS (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Former Vice President Richard Nixon offers his comments on next Tues day's elections.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY (NBC, 2-2:30 p.m.). Democratic spokesmen present their positions on significant campaign issues.

REPUBLICAN PARTY (NBC, 3-3:30 p.m.). The G.O.P. gets equal time.

ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (NBC, 7:30-9 p.m.). Settle back in "uffish thought" as Alice (Judi Rolin) goes after the burbling Jabberwock (Jack Palance), surrounded by a Looking Glass cast: the Red King and Queen (Robert Coote and Agnes Moorehead), the White King and Queen (Ricardo Montalban and Nanette Fabray), and those Tweedledeedums, the Smothers Brothers.

Monday, November 7

THE AVIATION REVOLUTION (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Everyone from the ground crew up has firm ideas about what's right and wrong with air travel these days. Chet Huntley narrates as they comment on air-traffic control, crew fatigue, terminal congestion, noise abatement and supersonic jets.

THEATER On Broadway THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. Frank Marcus' comedy hangs out the dirty laundry behind the scenes of a BBC soap opera. On the air, Sister George (Beryl Reid) is a habitual hymn hummer, but once her loving listeners tune out, she stalks around her lesbian household with a gin-and-cigar-flavored whiplash tongue.

THE APPLE TREE spoofs Adam and Eve and other historical romances, including the requited love-of a slavey for Hollywood stardom. Despite the saucily mocking presence of Barbara Harris, the evening consists of flabby satire, cartoon comedy and plop art.

A DELICATE BALANCE, by Edward Albee, has echoes of Pinterish menace and Cocktail Party elegance as it mutedly discusses the absence of love and the anguish of aloneness.. The characters fill and refill their whisky glasses, but the play is empty of thought or drama.

MAME is an all-out, smash-bang, pull-the-stops musical extravaganza that makes up in show-biz slickness what it lacks in artistic originality. Angela Lansbury turns in a fast-paced performance as Patrick Dennis' high-fashion, high-living aunt. But Jerry Herman's score seems to imitate his own past successes: the title song might be called Hello, Again, Dolly!

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! by Brian Friel, is the battle cry of a young man who finds that he must first defeat his past in a small Irish village before setting off to conquer the future in America.

SWEET CHARITY. In old-fashioned romances, the pure hero pursued the shy heroine until he won her. In this modern fable, the soiled heroine (Gwen Verdon) chases the effete hero until she loses him. Despite its melancholy theme, the musical is electric entertainment.

WAIT A MINIM! It is not often that Manhattan is serenaded by the sounds of the mbira, timbila, kalimba and tampura drone. But they arrived with the cast of this musical revue from South Africa to amuse and soothe the ears of theatergoers.

CACTUS FLOWER is a Gallic sex farce that not only survived the transplant from Paris, but, as deftly tended by Abe Burrows, has thrived as a long-blooming Broadway hit.

Off Broadway

EH?, by Henry Livings. This English import is a gorgeous farce with a stubbornly heroic antihero whom no machine, man or woman can tame. In a perfect cast, Dustin Hoffman is pluperfect. THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN first opened in 1925 and is the only play that George S. Kaufman ever wrote without a collaborator. This show-biz saga sags a bit now, and the lines are scarcely howlers, but period costumes and an able, loving cast endow it with innocent nostalgia.

ClNEMA

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Even though Director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, The Knack) tries hard, he cannot spoil all of the fun in this hilarious burlesque based on the plays of Plautus. The funniest things happen to Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers and Jack Gilford, playing Pseudolus, Lycus and Hysterium, three dirty old men in dirty old Rome.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director Billy Wilder (The Apartment; Kiss Me, Stupid) tackles that great pastime, cheating the insurance company. His antihero is a leering, sneering shyster lawyer, played by Walter Matthau, who pulls the strings for the supposedly injured party, Jack Lemmon, and ends up stealing the show.

GEORGY GIRL. The rags-to-riches story of a butler's dumpy daughter is like a thousand eccentric English comedies, but it boasts one sterling asset in Georgy herself, played with vibrant good humor by 23-year-old Lynn Redgrave, daughter of Sir Michael and sister of Vanessa.

LOVES OF A BLONDE. Slight but abrim with humorous insights, this delightful Czech comedy observes what happens when a pudding-faced pretty from a small town succumbs to a callow young piano player and follows him to his petit-bourgeois home in Prague.

THE SHAMELESS OLD LADY. A woman, having spent years in servitude as daughter, wife and mother, wins a new lease on life when her husband dies. Played to perfection by the veteran star of the Paris stage, Sylvie (like many other French performers, she uses only one name).

CRAZY QUILT. Henry (Tom Rosqui), by profession a termite exterminator, is a completely illusionless man. Lorabelle (Ina Mela), who believes in Providence and butterflies, is a visionary maid. How this unlikely couple meet, marry and share a long life together is the bittersweet burden of this American fable.

THE WRONG BOX. Bryan Forbes has a high old time directing Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Peter tellers in a Victorian spoof of such varied subjects as vast fortunes, star-struck lovers, Bournemouth stranglers venal doctors, missing bodies and orphaned cousins.

BOOKS Best Reading

ROBERT FROST: THE EARLY YEARS, by Lawrance Thompson. A surprising portrait of the poet as a precious, mixed-up young man who had to work hard to become a serene country sage.

A HOUSE IN ORDER, by Nigel Dennis. There is a very fine difference between being savagely witty and wittily savage, and Author Dennis never confuses the two in this anguished parable of a man who chooses to be a gardener instead of a soldier.

TREMOR OF INTENT, by Anthony Burgess. An ordinary spy plot becomes an unusual novel of depth, thanks to Burgess' memorable characterization and wit.

THE SUN KING, by Nancy Mitford. The scandalous complexity and splendor of Louis XIV's Court of Versailles reconstructed--and dissected--with learning and flair.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, by Jean Guehenno. The character and egocentric doctrine of the erratic Rousseau--in many ways the first modern man--are brilliantly displayed in an excellent translation from the French.

THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. The 1913 Beiliss trial, the Russian equivalent of the Dreyfus case, becomes an opportunity for Novelist Malamud to analyze the individual beleaguered by orthodoxies.

THE SECRET SURRENDER, by Allen Dulles. The organized surrender of 1,000,000 German and Italian troops a week before V-E day is ably recounted by former CIA Chief Dulles, who engineered the whole thing.

THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. This discursive novel , about a Russian double agent explores the recesses of the Slavic mind without explaining much about Dame Rebecca's chosen specialty, the meaning of treason.

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

2. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (2)

3. Tai-Pan, Clavell (5)

4. Capable of Honor, Drury (4)

5. The Adventurers, Robbins (3)

6. Giles Goat-Boy, Barth (7)

7. The Fixer, Malamud (6)

8. All in the Family, O'Connor (9)

9. The Source, Michener (10) 1

10. The Detective,Thorp (8)

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

2. Rush to Judgment, Lane (2)

3. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)

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

5. Games People Play, Berne (7)

6. With Kennedy, Salinger (5)

7. Flying Saucers--Serious Business, Edwards (6)

8. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (8)

9. The Passover Plot, Schonfield

10. Random House Dictionary of the English Language

* All times E.S.T.

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