Also on the Fall Schedule: The Not So Bold Ones

PRIME-TIME television is a well-balanced ecological system: it continually recycles its waste products. Names and faces may change; trends like this season's candor may throw a new light on things; but the basic material is shredded, pulped and reprocessed from year to year, reappearing each fall in soothingly familiar formats. Situation comedies, variety hours, cop-and-cowboy capers--the individual products may soon be discarded, but the molds are never broken.

So it is again this fall. While a show like CBS's Maude expands the limits of usable domestic subject matter, other new entries like ABC's Paul Lynde Show and CBS's Bob Newhart Show extend the already overextended tradition of stale sitcoms--symptoms of TV's banal-retention syndrome. More colorful, if not more original, is Anna and the King (of Siam) on CBS. It has the benefit of Samantha Eggar in the Gertrude Lawrence-Deborah Kerr role, and Yul Brynner in the Yul Brynner-Yul Brynner role, even if it does make the Orient all too scrutable.

Although the schedule at times looks like a closed-circuit transmission by the American Medical Association, relatively few new doctor shows are taking up residency this year. Among them, ABC's Temperatures Rising alone will offset any pathfinding that M* A* S* H may do. Last week's first episode was a clinical study in conditioned responses. The largest crop of newcomers is in the adventure category. Here the blood that gets spilled may be a little more ethnic; but on shows like NBC's Wednesday Mystery Movie and ABC's The Men, the cops, private eyes and international intriguers will be working their accustomed beats. Law and disorder will still prevail.

The new variety shows have also been mounted in the apparent belief that familiarity breeds contentment. Julie Andrews is back in a lavishly produced ABC series that began last week with--surprise--reprises of songs from My Fair Lady, Camelot, Mary Poppins, etc. Bill Cosby's CBS show so far seems even more low-keyed and less topical than his previous comedy material.

What then is in this season without also being out--outspoken, outrageous or out of sight? Movies. All three networks will unreel miles of movies, not only made-for-TV slickies but also an impressive array of recent hits from commercial theaters. Among them: Yellow Submarine, Patton, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, In the Heat of the Night and Love Story.

What is new without also being controversial? Specials. There will be musical specials (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on NBC, with Kirk Douglas singing in both title roles), comedy specials (NBC's The Trouble With People, five vignettes by Neil Simon), even living-legend specials (Marlene Dietrich on CBS).

Specials will also continue to provide an avenue for drama's modest comeback on TV. Theatrical Producer Joseph Papp will bring Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing to CBS. ABC will show a filmed performance of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night by Laurence Olivier and England's National Theater troupe. Many specials will probably turn out to be less than special, but in their diversity and indefinability they may be a good portent: they constitute a format that offers some hope of liberation from the very concept of format.

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