Wednesday, April 5 SID CAESAR, IMOGENE COCA, CARL REINER, HOWARD MORRIS SPECIAL (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.).* Stars of the oldtimer "Your Show of Shows" come back to spoof rock 'n' roll groups, the Paris tourist and Italian opera. The Billy Williams Quartet comes with them.

THE ABC WEDNESDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.). Dean Martin, Susan Hayward and Martin Balsam engage in a political chess game for the governorship of California in 1961's Ada.

NBC NEWS INQUIRY: CROSSROADS IN SPACE (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A detailed report on the origin, development and present status of NASA, including a sharp examination of the pros and cons of moving the manned space center from Cape Kennedy to Houston. Frank McGee interviews NASA's top administrators as well as critics of the space program.

Thursday, April 6 NBC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Sidney Poitier is host of the Harry Belafonte production "A Time for Laughter," which flashes back through 100 years of bittersweet Negro humor. Comedy sketches and songs by Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Dick Gregory, Redd Foxx, Godfrey Cambridge.

Friday, April 7 CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). The Long Ships (1964), a period piece aswash with buckle. Sidney Poitier, leader of the Moors, and Richard Widmark, the Viking chief, clash in their search for lost treasures.

PORTRAIT OF WILLIE MAYS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). The Giants' captain reminisces about last season's pressure-cooker finish and makes some predictions for 1967. Chris Schenkel narrates filmed moments of Mays at home and at play.

Saturday, April 8 ABC's WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Highlights from Sebring's twelve-hour Grand Prix of Endurance for sportscars, plus the A.A.U. Men's Indoor Swimming Championships in Dallas.

MASTERS GOLF TOURNAMENT (CBS, 5-6 p.m.). Action at 14th through the 18th holes, broadcast live from Georgia's famed Augusta National Golf Club, and continuing on Sunday from 4-5:30 p.m.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY SPECIAL (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Captain and Mrs. Irving Johnson con their 50-ft. ketch through the inland waterways of France, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium in "Yankee Sails Across Europe."

G.E. THEATER (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). A recreation of Broadway's musical hit of the '50s, Damn Yankees, starring Phil Silvers, Lee Remick, Ray Middleton, Jim Backus and Fran Allison.

Sunday, April 9 NBC EXPERIMENT IN TELEVISION (NBC, 4-5 p.m.). "The Questions," a stream-of-conscience play by John Hawkes that centers on a woman's choice of coming to grips with reality or facing emotional oblivion. Fritz Weaver and Verna Bloom are featured.

THE 215T CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). In "Autos, Autos Everywhere," Walter Cronkite drives the cars of the future, and Professor Dwight Bauman of M.I.T. discusses some far-out plans for fully automated highways.

BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). "The Sounds and Sights of New Orleans," featuring Trumpeter Al Hirt and Pete Fountain with his clarinet; the jazz museum with its own living legend, Guitarist Danny Barker; and the inevitable Young Tuxedo Brass Band on the way to the cemetery.

ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-1 1 p.m.). Taylor and Burton discover that "this marriage can be saved" if they are marooned at an airport long enough in The V.I.P.s (1963).

Monday, April 10 CHARLIE BROWN's ALL STARS (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Rebroadcast of the famous game in which the "Peanuts" gang suffered their 999th straight loss.

39TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS PRESENTATION (ABC, 10 p.m. till conclusion). Hope returns with this year's team of presenters, including Fred Astaire, Rosalind Russell, James Stewart, Vanessa Redgrave, Patricia Neal, Audrey Hepburn.

Tuesday, April 11 SPECIAL -DICK VAN DYKE (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). In his first comedy-variety special, Dick Van Dyke ranges the musical scale from Margie to Bach, assisted by guest star, Phil Erickson.

CBS NEWS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "Morley Safer's Viet Nam," a look at the land's many faces: the clamor of Saigon and the desolate boondocks; privileged ladies sipping tea with Madame Ky and women toiling in the paddyfields; men fighting in the jungle, girls bathing at the beach.

THEATER

On Broadway

YOU KNOW I CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN THE WATER'S RUNNING. Robert Anderson uses sex to ski through four separate playlets, and the trip is thoroughly enjoyable--even if a trifle obsessive. Martin Balsam, Eileen Heckart and George Grizzard slalom through the comedy with dazzling grace, while Director Alan Schneider unleashes the humor in a blizzard of hilarity.

THE HOMECOMING. British Playwright Harold Pinter never shouts. He whispers, and his whispers echo endlessly. Performed by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company and directed by Peter Hall, his drama is as entertaining as it is compelling. As the whispers speak of family, of love, of men and women, of exploitation, every word carries weight, every pause makes a point.

BLACK COMEDY is a slam-bang comedy--literally. The humor of Peter Shaffer's one-acter springs more from body English than feats of wit. It is based on a single conceit -- watching agile actors in a blaze of lights behave and misbehave, bump and reel, as if in total darkness.

THE APA REPERTORY COMPANY. The mix in the company's current dramatic bag is set in the English drawing room and the Norwegian household; it is culled from the Russian epic and the American farce. Rosemary Harris leads the highly competent group in School for Scandal, The Wild Duck, War and Peace and You Can't Take It with You.

WALKING HAPPY has bounce, zing, and Wisdom--Norman that is. The musical adaptation of H. G. Brighouse's Hobson's Choice tells of a shoemaker reluctantly pulled up by the bootstraps and the determination of a self-appointed fiancee. While the music ho-hums along, Danny Daniels' dashing choreography keeps the show high-kicking.

AT THE DROP OF ANOTHER HAT. The humor of Michael Flanders' and Donald Swann's revue resembles a martini: it goes down smoothly, is slightly sly, and definitely dry.

Off Broadway

HAMP. John Wilson probes the conflict between discipline and compassion in an absorbing drama about a court-martial amidst the guns of World War I. Robert Salvio's portrayal of Private Hamp, a pebble of innocence crushed by the inexorable wheels of the military machine, is both sensitive and touching.

AMERICA HURRAH, by Jean-Claude van Itallie, erupts on the theatrical landscape, pouring a lava of satire, comment and invective on some questionable aspects of modern life. Three playlets, Interview, TV and Motel are inventively directed by Jacques Levy and Joseph Chaikin and interpreted by a flawless cast.

EH?, by Henry Livings, is about Valentine Brose. He lives in a boiler room. He is a nit. His wife lives in there too. She is a nut. He is funny. She is funny. So is the play.

CINEMA

ULYSSES. An honest mildy sensational, and for the most part intelligent precis of James Joyce's masterpiece -- although the film suffers from Director Joseph Strick's decision simply to illustrate Joyce's words rather than transform them into images.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. Italian Director Franco Zeffirelli has breathed new life into Shakespeare's bawdy comedy with a brash and breezy style and lusty performances from Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

FALSTAFF. Orson Welles is both director and star of this amalgam of scenes from five of Shakespeare's history plays in which the Bard's "bombard" of a buffoon domi nates the stage. The film flickers with the glitter of genius--amid great stony stretches of dullness and incoherence.

PERSONA. Swedish Actress Bibi Andersson and Norwegian Actress Liv Ullman look alike, and from this similarity Director Ingmar Bergman has woven a deep, dark story of merging personalities.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. Hollywood has broken the (Bobby) Morse code and come up with a pretty good reproduction of the Broadway hit musical.

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UN DER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. An excellent rendering of the Royal Shakespeare Company stage production.

DUTCHMAN. Subways are not for sleeping in this 55-minute rendering of LeRoi Jones's racial shocker that slams through the spectator like a jolt from the third rail.

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW. Both the faults and freshness of the custard-pie plot and wacky camera work that tell the story of a youth cutting loose in Manhattan stem from the vast, undisciplined energy of Director Francis Ford Coppola--a new talent worth watching.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Playwright Robert Bolt, Director Fred Zinnemann and Actor Paul Scofield have all been nominated for Academy Awards for their contributions to this excellent film about Sir Thomas More.

BOOKS

Best Reading

DISRAELI, by Robert Blake. An excellent biography of the brilliant and irreverent Prime Minister whose gaiety and wit infuriated his Victorian contemporaries even as they illuminated the issues and pretenses of his time.

JOURNEY THROUGH A HAUNTED LAND, by Amos Elon. Following a long, thoughtful trip through Germany, an Israeli journalist writes of the "moral schizophrenia" and conflicting values that haunt the country a generation after the death camps.

THE UNICORN GIRL, by Caroline Glyn. A 19-year-old novelist takes a fresh look at the passions and perils of early adolescence in a properly upsetting setting: a chaotic Girl Guide summer camp.

A SHORTER FINNEGANS WAKE, by James Joyce, edited by Anthony Burgess. Novelist Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) has pulled Joyce's astronomical Dublin masterpiece into the general reader's field of vision simply by cutting out two-thirds of it. There is still plenty of wit and wordplay left.

BLACK IS BEST, by Jack Olsen. The life and times of Cassius Clay in a sharp-eyed biography that unerringly--and engagingly--separates fact from bigmouth chaff.

FATHERS, by Herbert Gold. A long, loving search--both forward and backward--for the essence of parenthood; a tribute to that most neglected figure in American fiction --the Jewish father.

THE MURDERERS AMONG US: THE WIESENTHAL MEMOIRS, edited by Joseph Wechsberg. In a style as spare and striking as Dashiell Hammett's, dogged Nazi-Hunter j Simon Wiesenthal recounts the career that brought 800 war criminals--including Adolf Eichmann--to justice, and made of Wiesenthal a kind of Intercontinental Op.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Arrangement, Kazan (1 last week) 2. Capable of Honor, Dairy (3) 3. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (2) 4. The Captain, De Hartog (5) 5. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (4) 6. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (6) 7. The Birds Fall Down, West (8) 8. All in the Family, O'Connor (7) 9. Five Smooth Stones, Fairbairn (9) 10. Tai-Pan, Clavell (10)

NONFICTION 1. Madame Sarah, Skinner (1) 2. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, Steam (3) 3. Everything But Money, Levenson (2) 4. Paper Lion, Plimpton (4) 5. Games People Play, Berne (7) 6. Inside South America, Gunther (5) 7. The Jury Returns, Nizer (6) 8. Disraeli, Blake 9. A Search for the Truth, Montgomery 10. The Boston Strangler, Frank

* All times E.S.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.