The New Shows

Hawkins Falls (weekdays, 5 p.m., NBCTV) won critical good marks last year as a literate, but unsponsored, example of the relaxed "Chicago school" of TV. This year, cut to 15 minutes and tricked out with a sudsy dramatic line, Hawkins Falls seems more intent on impressing its. sponsor (Lever Bros.) than its critics. But even with the added heart tugs of a bedridden invalid, a runaway boy and a self-sacrificing wife, the show keeps enough of its original flavor to be better-than-average daytime TV fare.

The Somerset Maugham Theater (alternate Mon. 9:30 p.m., NBC-TV), which moves to a new network and becomes an hour show, stumbled badly with its dramatization of Of Human Bondage. The script curiously diminished the role of

Mildred, who, even as a tubercular, was played with bumptious enthusiasm by Cloris Leachman. As the clubfooted Philip, Tom Helmore seemed wooden-faced and without passion. Nearly as much drama was packed into the commercials (Tintair), which starred June Havoc, Joyce Mathews and a model who triumphantly completed dyeing her mouse-blonde hair to brunette while Maugham's characters were struggling to their happy ending.

Q.E.D. (Tues. 9 p.m., ABC-TV) is a new, unsponsored quiz program devoted to brain teasers ("There are two windows, each four feet from top to bottom, and four feet across--why does one give twice as much light as the other?").* On the opening show, M. C. Doug Browning and his panel of experts (Actors Nina Foch and Charles Korvin, ex-Governor Hoffman of New Jersey, Producer Hi Brown) ended up in nearly as much confusion as the TV audience.

Ford Festival (Thurs. 9 p.m., NBCTV) is an hour-long look at Tenor James Melton juicily singing such chestnuts as My Wild Irish Rose, or walking through a scene from Madame Butterfly. Each musical number is scored, acted and costumed as though it were the finale. Also on hand: Monologist Vera Vague; Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Commercials: unobtrusive films of the latest Ford models.

*Answer: one is square; the other diamond-shaped or triangular.

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