The New Shows

You Are There (Sun. 6 p.m., CBS-TV) is another radio veteran making the switch to TV. Its basic idea: to recreate events of the past as though they are news stories of the present. Unfortunately, the show flunked its first two assignments: the 1937 destruction of the airship Hindenburg, and the 1882 killing of Jesse James. You Are There's chief trouble is a tendency to meander instead of march to its dramatic climax. Also, its characters are too wordily aware of their place in history. The sponsor (on alternate weeks): America's Electric Light & Power Companies.

Action in the Afternoon (weekdays, 3:30 p.m., CBS-TV) has a permanent outdoor set: a Western cowtown built by Philadelphia's WCAU-TV on a vacant lot. But, though the TV camera gets outdoors, it has little freedom: there are no long chases on horseback or free-for-all barroom brawls in the movie horse-opera tradition. The dialogue limps even more obviously than the camera. Action in the Afternoon, still without sponsor, is an experiment that needs a lot more work.

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