Critics' Choice

TELEVISION

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS (TBS, Jan. 28, 11:05 p.m. EST). Morning-line favorites for Oscar nominations vie for statuettes as the annual awards-show binge begins.

HOME FIRES BURNING (CBS, Jan. 29, 9 p.m. EST). A small-town Southern family sees its comfortable life changed by World War II. Barnard Hughes and Sada Thompson star in this Hallmark Hall of Fame drama.

ETHICS IN AMERICA (PBS, starting Jan. 31, 10 p.m. on most stations). What is an individual's responsibility to the homeless? How far can lawyers go in defending a client? These and other knotty questions will be probed in a ten- week series of free-form debates, introduced by Fred Friendly.

BOOKS

INCLINE OUR HEARTS by A.N. Wilson (Viking; $17.95). A London child is orphaned by German bombs during World War II and sent to live with relatives in the English countryside. What follows is a seriocomic autobiographical novel about coming of age in an age deucedly difficult to understand.

HONG KONG by Jan Morris (Random House; $19.95). The indefatigable traveler and perceptive commentator conveys the sights, sounds, aromas and political significance of this thriving British colony, scheduled to be returned to China in 1997.

AMERICAN APPETITES by Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton; $18.95). A prolific author's powerful novel about a well-to-do married couple falling before an unearned fate.

THEATER

A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL. Alan Ayckbourn, known as Britain's Neil Simon for his send-ups of suburbia, is at his shrewdest in this backstage tale of amateur theatricals, at Washington's Arena Stage.

THE PIANO LESSON. This stunning work by dramatist August Wilson, at Chicago's Goodman Theater, combines the emotional clout of his Pulitzer-prizewinning Fences with the lyricism of his Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

MOVIES

THE JANUARY MAN. Not a conventional whodunit. The mysteries in this spitball comedy are matters of the eccentric heart: How will a New York City fireman (Kevin Kline) win back his ex-girlfriend (Susan Sarandon) or find accommodating love with the mayor's daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) ? John Patrick Shanley, whose luminous script for Moonstruck won an Oscar, scores again here.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS. What deadly games people play in this excellent gloss on Christopher Hampton's play. John Malkovich and Glenn Close are the decadent puppeteers of lust who realize, too late, that the job comes with fatal strings attached.