TELEVISION

Wednesday, April 26

HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 7:30-9 p.m.).* "Soldier in Love," an original drama set in 18th century England that recounts the story of Sir Winston Churchill's ancestors John and Sarah Churchill, who married to the dismay of their respective families but to the delight of Queen Anne. Starring Jean Simmons, Claire Bloom, Keith Michell, Basil Rathbone and Roy Poole.

Thursday, April 27

TWIGGY IN NEW YORK (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Photographer Bert Stern catches the lanky Britisher looking at New York and New Yorkers as they stare back.

ABC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). James Mason in John Le Carre's "Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn," a tale of an ingenious escape from East Germany. Repeat.

Saturday, April 29

THE SAM SNEAD GOLF SHOW (ABC, 4:30-5 p.m.). Sam starts an instructional series that includes a helpful round with an elderly duffer at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. Premiere.

Sunday, April 30

EXPERIMENT IN TELEVISION (NBC, 4-5 p.m.). Author George Plimpton (The Paper Lion) hosts "Movies in the Now Generation," eight short films made by students in England, Poland, Belgium and the U.S.

THE 215T CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "Conquering the Sea." A look at all the strange and wonderful tools being developed for mankind to exploit the ocean depths--with fish ranches, coal and diamond mines, even hydroelectric stations to generate power.

THE PILL (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). Hugh Downs hosts a special edition of the Today show that tries to place the birth control pill in medical and moral perspective through interviews with medical authorities, clergy and users of the contraceptive.

Monday, May 1

ZERO HOUR (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Zero Mostel in a one-man concert of singing, dancing and comedy.

Tuesday, May 2

THE NATIONAL SCIENCE TEST (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Having already tested its viewers on driving, health, income tax and politics, CBS now wants to find out how much they know about the sciences.

THEATER

On Broadway

YOU KNOW I CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN THE WATER'S RUNNING. Robert Anderson splashes sex around and raises a steady spray of humor for Martin Balsam, Eileen Heckart and George Grizzard, who develop his four playlets with insouciant grace and professional skill.

THE HOMECOMING. An arid intellectual and his sex-parched wife arrive in London from the U.S. to visit his bull walrus of a father and two brothers in a house the family calls the "land of no holds barred."

He eventually flees, but she stays on--with pleasure. Members of the Royal Shakespeare Company give the latest puzzle from Playwright Harold Pinter a polished, tempered performance.

BLACK COMEDY. When the lights are supposed to be on, the stage is totally dark; when the lights are supposed to be off, the stage is ablaze, allowing the audience to see Peter Shaffer's electrically amusing farce about antics in the dark.

CABARET has nothing beneath its glossy veneer but another veneer. The musical version of / Am a Camera strikes notes of originality in its production but merely plays the old saws in its book and score.

Off Broadway

HAMP tries a British youth for deserting when the blood and din of World War I overwhelm him. Though innocent of evil, he is guilty of breach of duty, and must be condemned. Robert Salvio is movingly effective as the frightened Private Hamp.

RECORDS

Orchestral

A TOSCANINI TREASURY OF HISTORIC BROADCASTS (RCA Victor; 5 LPs). Lest we forget that the maestro of maestros was born 100 years ago, RCA has released this album of some of his legendary performances. Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and Sibelius are all represented, but the album's hit is the U.S. premiere of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, which was composed in 1941 in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad. A microfilm of the score was soon whisked out of Russia and into Toscanini's hands. Conducting his NBC Symphony, he draws forth all the pity, terror and courage in this powerful sound picture of the Nazi invasion of Russia.

VARESE: ARCANA (RCA Victor). Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra attack the late Edgard Varese's exciting, if twitchy, rhythms. Arcana was completed by 1927, but it still sounds avantgarde, because it makes "absolute music" with a heckelphone, coconuts and more than 120 other instruments. Intriguing though it may be, Arcana sounds more like warring fusillades than music.

NIELSEN: SYMPHONY NO. 6 (Columbia). While Varese was wholeheartedly knocking coconuts, Danish Composer Carl Nielsen was less jovially contemplating the death of romanticism. In Nielsen's bitter, instructive and humorous Sinfonia Semplice, sweet strains are brutally harangued by sneering trombones and the icy tinkles of glockenspiel and triangles. In spite of the symphony's warning of the long winter's night ahead for music, Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra succeed in realizing Nielsen's hope of making it "as lively and gay as possible."

BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO. 3 (Columbia). Bruckner's favorite instrument, an organ in an Austrian monastery, stands over his grave. Viennese wits maliciously commented that his music sounded as if he had been buried by an organ long before he was dead. But Wagner compared Bruckner's ideas to Beethoven's, and Bruckner dedicated his Third Symphony to his mentor at Bayreuth. The Cleveland Orchestra is Szellously conducted through Bruckner's poignant lyricism--but somewhat banal melodies.

SCHUMANN: "SPRING" SYMPHONY (Angel). Schumann composed his First Symphony in honor of his honeymoon year with Clara, and it is one of the happiest works by this tragic composer. Otto Klemperer's exuberant conducting helps to make this recording another ideal series of melodies for spring.

MOZART: SYMPHONIES NOS. 39 AND 36 (Deutsche Grammophon). Frozen souls and frigid spirits can always warm themselves before the fire of Mozart's impudent joy. The master may never have heard his own 39th Symphony played, because he probably composed it for a private concert that never materialized, but it has since become one of Mozart's most welcome though familiar works. Karl Bohm and the Berlin Philharmonic give it, and the less often played "Linz" Symphony on the other side, their exacting due.

CINEMA

ACCIDENT. Screenwriter Harold Pinter and Director Joseph Losey probe the inner anxiety of a group of Oxford dons, students and wives, and find more bone than flesh.

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Too many slices of cutie-pie and dance interludes as spurious as bathtub gin make this excursion back to the '20s thoroughly maudlin.

LA VIE DE CHATEAU. A farce about the German occupation of Normandy which proves that the flip side of war and the flop side of marriage can be equally funny.

ULYSSES. Director Joseph Strick has fashioned, if not the best, certainly not the worst possible film version of James Joyce's novel, assisted by a fine cast of actors (particularly Milo O'Shea as Bloom) who ring as true as Irish shillings.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. The Burtons and Director Franco Zeffirelli have mounted the liveliest screen incarnation of Shakespeare since Olivier's Henry V.

PERSONA. A famous actress (Liv Ullman) and a nurse (Bibi Andersson) exchange personalities in this absorbing movie directed by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. This movie version of the 1961 Broadway hit musical succeeds by sticking close to the original, but also disappoints by not really trying for fresh cinematic values.

FALSTAFF. Actor Orson Welles has caught more of the dark than the light side of Shakespeare's pun-prone, fun-filled roisterer, and Director Welles's amalgam of five of the historical plays is often stonily dull, despite some sparks of genius.

LA GUERRE EST FINIE. A peek through the other end of the spyglass, as French Director Alain Resnais examines the mind and mores of a Communist agitator left over from the Spanish Civil War but still traveling the dreadmill.

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW. Peter Kastner heads a cast that includes Julie Harris, Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page and Rip Torn in this daft, though not always deft, first effort by Director Francis Ford Coppola.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE UNICORN GIRL, by Caroline Glyn. A rangy, clumsy 13-year-old goes off to Girl Guide camp to find a few friends but finds herself instead. Along the way, Novelist Glyn points out some of the hilariously muddled drills the Guides perform with alarming girlish intensity.

JOURNEY THROUGH A HAUNTED LAND: THE NEW GERMANY, by Amos Elon. A searching and compassionate study of today's Germany by an Israeli journalist who never forgets that he could have been a victim of yesterday's Germany.

DISRAELI, by Robert Blake. The wiles and wit of Britain's most prodigal Victorian Prime Minister, whose life as recounted in this excellent biography proves even richer than the many versions of its myth.

FATHERS, by Herbert Gold. A basically sentimental celebration of fatherhood--Jewish fatherhood, in particular--that rises above itself because of the author's high craftsmanship, fine irony and strong sense of the absurd.

THE MURDERERS AMONG US: THE WIESENTHAL MEMOIRS, edited by Joseph Wechsberg. The incredible career of Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who brought Adolf Eichmann and 800 other war criminals to justice.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL. This candid account of his early life and career by old (94) Mathematician-Philosopher Russell wittily explores and explains his curious preoccupation with the irrational and mystical quotient in human mathematics.

A SPORT AND A PASTIME, by James Salter. A promising new novelist tells in a new way that oldest of stories: boy meets girl. Cool, compelling and brilliantly written.

THE FISH CAN SING, by Halldor Laxness. The foggy, fusty Iceland of a few generations ago, beautifully evoked by a Nobel prizewinner.

MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? AND OTHER COMEDIES OF THE SEXUAL LIFE, by Graham Greene. While sex is the name of the game in this collection of short stories, Old Pro Greene thoroughly gilds the libido with the sensibilities of an informed heart.

A MEETING BY THE RIVER, by Christopher Isherwood limns sharply contrasting portraits of brothers--one saintly, the other venal. Esthetically, at least, evil triumphs: the evil brother ranks with Sally Bowles and Arthur Norris among Isherwood's most likable rogues.

THE CHOSEN, by Chaim Potok. Another hearty bowl of New York Jewish chicken soup, though this time the rebellion against orthodoxy is set against a background of Brooklyn in the waning days of World War II.

Best Sellers FICTION

1. The Arrangement, Kazan (1 last week)

2. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (2)

3. The Eighth Day, Wilder (6)

4. Capable of Honor, Drury (3)

5. The Captain, De Hartog (4)

6. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (5)

7. Tales of Manhattan, Auchincloss (9)

8. The Birds Fall Down, West

9. The Time is Noon, Buck

10. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (8)

NONFICTION 1. The Death of a President, Manchester (8)

2. Madame Sarah, Skinner (1)

3. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)

4. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, Steam (2)

5. Paper Lion, Plimpton (5)

6. Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control . . . , Friendly

7. Games People Play, Berne (4)

8. The Jury Returns, Nizer (7)

9. Inside South America, Gunther (6) 10. The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright

-All times E.S.T. through April 29; E.D.T. from then on.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.