TELEVISION

Wednesday, January 3

THE KRAFT MUSIC HALL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Victor Borge, Nancy Wilson and Simon and Garfunkel appear in separate performances in "Trio for Tonight."

THE JONATHAN WINTERS SHOW (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The Smothers Brothers, Barbara McNair and the Strawberry Alarm Clock sound off as Winters' guests.

Thursday, January 4

BATMAN (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger as Shyster Lawyer "Lucky Pierre" defends the Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) and the Joker (Cesar Romero).

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). The Music Man (1962), starring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones and Buddy Hackett, rebroadcast in split-feature form: Part 1 tonight, Part 2 same time on the CBS Friday Night Movie.

Friday, January 5

OPERATION: ENTERTAINMENT (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A chance for stay-at-homes to see the shows performed for G.I.s around the world. In the premiere of a weekly series: Impressionist Rich Little, Singers Vikki Carr and the Lennon Sisters take the stage for Marines at Camp Pendleton in California.

TOMORROW'S WORLD: BEYOND THE SKY (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Where man may eventually go in space, with predictions and comments by George Robino of the U.S. Geological Survey, Rand Corp.'s Steven Dole and Lockheed's Maxwell Hunter.

Saturday, January 6

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). Alfred Hitchcock's thriller-chiller, The Birds (1962), starring Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette.

Sunday, January 7

CAMERA THREE (CBS, 11-11:30 a.m.). "Lucien Clergue, the Photographer as Poet" presents Clergue himself, friend of Picasso and Cocteau, and a collection of photos of his native Camargue in the south of France.

ISSUES AND ANSWERS (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Senator Eugene McCarthy discusses his opposition to President Johnson on the first of a 1968 series of programs collectively entitled "Race to the White House."

THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE PLAY-OFF BOWL (CBS, 1:30 p.m. to conclusion). Division champions fight it out in Miami.

ANIMAL SECRETS (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). Dr. Loren Eiseley of the University of Pennsylvania is host on today's look at how life on earth began, "The Beginnings."

MUTUAL OF OMAHA'S WILD KINGDOM (NBC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Host Marlin Perkins travels to Rhodesia's Wankie Game Preserve to demonstrate how "To Catch a Giraffe."

THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Guests include Nancy Sinatra, Dionne Warwick and Alan King.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (ABC, 9-11:30 p.m.). Jack Palance in the title roles of the Robert Louis Stevenson psycho-classic, especially adapted for television.

Monday, January 8

THE UNDERSEAS WORLD OF JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). First of a series of scientific-adventure specials filmed by Captain Cousteau under the world's major oceans during a five-year oceanographic expedition. For this week's feature, "Sharks," Cousteau's crew probes the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, studying the fish and ways to protect downed flyers and shipwreck victims from them.

THE DANNY THOMAS HOUR (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Danny takes Guests Van Johnson, Polly Bergen and Louis Prima on a musical jaunt in "America I Love You."

Tuesday, January 9

IN CONCERT: WITH HERMAN'S HERMITS (NBC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Herman (Peter Noone) and his Hermits caught in musical action at last summer's Ohio State Fair.

IT TAKES A THIEF (ABC, 8:30-10 p.m.). A paroled thief leads a swinging life stealing for a government intelligence agency. Premiere of a weekly series starring Robert Wagner. Senta Berger, John Saxon and a cameo cast including Raymond Burr, Wally Cox, Joe Louis and Les Crane appear in tonight's episode.

CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENTS REPORT (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Part 2 of the year in review: "The Nation," moderated by Walter Cronkite.

NET FESTIVAL. "Martha Graham: Night Journey." Martha Graham discusses her concept of the dance and illustrates it when she performs as Jocasta in her own ballet, "Night Journey," which is based on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.

NET JOURNAL (shown on Mondays). "Warfront '68." An assessment of the Vietnamese war and its coverage from Saigon by New York Times's R. W. Apple Jr., Los Angeles Times's William Touhy, A.P.'s Peter Arnett and The New Yorker's Robert Shaplen.

PUBLIC BROADCAST LABORATORY (shown on Sundays). A two-hour weekly program of cultural and public affairs.

THEATER

On Broadway

SPOFFORD. Playwright-Director Herman Shumlin has performed an autopsy on Peter DeVries' novel Reuben, Reuben. Melvyn Douglas gives a cunningly ingratiating performance as a retired Connecticut Yankee chicken farmer who finds New York commuters the bane and boon of his existence. The melancholy fact remains that, like an obituary, an adaptation of a novel to the stage says good things of the dead without restoring them to life.

THE SHOW-OFF. A North Philadelphia family is forced to change gears when a monkey wrench, in the form of a loudmouth son-in-law (Clayton Corzatte), is thrown into the domestic proceedings. Helen Hayes leads the APA repertory company in a skillful revival of George Kelly's 43-year-old comedy.

PANTAGLEIZE. The APA again, mounting a stylish production of the Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode's grotesque historical farce. From the cornucopia of his imagination comes spilling forth Pantagleize (Ellis Rabb), a Chaplinesque figure who, equipped with only an umbrella, a silly expression, and an innocent greeting, manages to start a revolution.

EVERYTHING IN THE GARDEN. Edward Albee transfers a bleak comedy by the late Giles Cooper from England to U.S. suburbia. Barry Nelson and Barbara Bel Geddes play a couple who can't make ends meet until she finds a career in the world's oldest profession.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or is it Guildencrantz and Rosenstern, are Shakespeare's Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Tom Stoppard's hapless heroes. Buffeted about in the maelstrom of emotions and events at Elsinore, they are pulled out of their niches to do they know not what, or to what purpose. Actors John Wood, Brian Murray and Paul Hecht respond like finely tuned instruments to Stoppard's inciteful prose and Derek Goldby's insightful direction.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Harold Pinter, is a comedy of terrors, tickling the funny bone with the feather of the absurd while scratching away at the skin with the razor edge of truth.

Off Broadway

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. Euripides examines the limits to which a man's blind ambition can push him in the appalling story of Agamemnon's sacrifice of his own daughter for the sake of winning a military victory. As a wronged wife and wounded mother, Irene Papas is a vessel of chained intensity.

THE TRIALS OF BROTHER JERO and THE STRONG BREED. The first play by Nigerian Playwright Wole Soyinka is an affectionate spoof of the self-anointed preachers who collect their flocks on the African beaches, while the second play draws its symbolism and rich imagery from tribal myths and archetypes.

IN CIRCLES. In the Judson Poets' Theater production of her 1920 circular play, Gertrude Stein is shown to be the still-reigning queen of sensible nonsense and the undisputed mistress of logical illogic.

ClNEMA

IN COLD BLOOD. Richard Brooks has followed Truman Capote's harrowing anatomization of a multiple murder in Kansas with remarkable fidelity, and the performances of the unknown actors who portray the killers (Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock, Robert Blake as Perry Smith) lift the film to near brilliance.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. Numb is the only thing viewers are likely to feel after this film version of Jacqueline Susann's bestselling novel about three semi-recognizable pill-swallowing show-biz sickies in Hollywood's nightmare valley.

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. Stanley Kramer's new film sets out bravely to face the problems of the marriage of a Negro man (Sidney Poitier) to a white girl (Katharine Houghton), but retreats into sugary platitudes despite the rallying performances of Spencer Tracy, as the girl's liberal but reluctant father, and Katharine Hepburn, as her sentimental mother.

BEDAZZLED. Two members of the wily Beyond the Fringe foursome play Faust and loose with an old theme as a meek short-order cook (Dudley Moore) sells his soul to the Devil (Peter Cook) in return for seven wishes.

LEMONADE JOE. The Czechs kid the Levi's off the American western in a spoof from the same bag as Cat Ballon.

BOOKS

Best Reading

TOLSTOY, by Henri Troyat. The paradoxes, inconsistencies and greatness of Tolstoy's life and art are brilliantly recreated in the most thorough biography to date of the Russian literary giant.

WILLIAM MORRIS, HIS LIFE, WORK AND FRIENDS, by Philip Henderson. A biography of the 19th century English artist who excelled as a poet, philosopher, painter, architect and interior decorator.

THE FUTURE OF GERMANY, by Karl Jaspers. In a lucid and persuasive essay, the 85-year-old German philosopher urges his countrymen to build a nation based on individual responsibility rather than on an atavistic dream of a perfect state.

JOURNEY INTO THE WHIRLWIND, by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. An intensely personal account of the author's experiences in one of Stalin's slave-labor camps.

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ANDRE MAUROIS. In 38 tales framed as conversations, recollections and letters, the late distinguished partisan in the battle of the sexes tours the terrain of women who are either wise or foolish, vital or declining, in love or remembering what love was like.

THE YEAR 2000, by Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener. Members of New York's Hudson Institute, one of the nation's leading think tanks, offer educated speculation on the quality of life at the beginning of the 21st century.

MEMOIRS: 1925-1950, by George F. Kennan. During a crucial quarter-century of American-Russian relations, Diplomat Kennan was in official disfavor, first for being too harsh toward the Soviets, then for being too soft; hindsight shows that he was right more often than wrong.

THE SLOW NATIVES, by Thea Astley. A mod family in Brisbane meets its fate in this lively social satire by an Australian craftsman of the novel.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (1 last week)

2. Topaz, Uris (2)

3. The Exhibitionist, Sutton (3)

4. Christy, Marshall (7)

5. The Gabriel Hounds, Stewart (4)

6. The Chosen, Potok (5)

7. A Night of Watching, Arnold (8)

8. Where Eagles Dare, MacLean

9. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (6)

10. The President's Plane Is Missing, Serling

NONFICTION

1. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (1)

2. Our Crowd, Birmingham (2)

3. Memoirs: 1925-1950, Kennan (3)

4. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker (4)

5. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower (10)

6. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (5)

7. Incredible Victory, Lord (8)

8. Twenty Letters to a Friend, Alliluyeva (6)

9. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (9) 10. The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology (7)

*All Times E.S.T.

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