The New Season (Contd.)

If only because of the lackluster quality of the competition, ABC, the perennial lightweight among TV's big three, looked surprisingly strong in last week's round of fall premieres. With the British-made suspense anthology Journey to the Unknown (Thursday, 9:30-10:30 p.m., E.D.T.), ABC escorted viewers on the weirdest--and most fascinating--excursion since the days of The Twilight Zone. The first episode, an adaptation of John Collier's short story, Special Delivery, successfully elaborated on a typical Collier theme--a young man (Dennis Waterman) falls in love with a department-store mannequin (Carol Lynley) and dies in its/her arms.

Refreshing in an entirely different way is That's Life (Tuesday, 10-11 p.m.). In this free-spirited musical lark, another hapless hero, Robert Morse, plays opposite a real-life doll with the unlikely name of E.J. (for Edra Jeanne) Peaker. Informal to the point of plotlessness, the series romps through a tomato surprise of old tunes and new ones, comedy sketches and big production numbers. Old Pro George Burns helped tie together the opening-night proceedings with cigar-chomping asides and monologues. Another guest, Tony Randall, contributed a mix of roguish, debonair and fumbling antics. Other celebrities will appear in future weeks to goad the ingratiating team of Morse and Peaker along their song-and-dance journey through courtship and marriage. That's Life should live, if not happily ever after, at least for the TV season.

Among the lesser ABC debuts:

-- The Outcasts (Monday, 9-10 p.m.). Something new gallops across the TV sagebrush: a pair of racially integrated bounty hunters. In this post-Civil War oater, Don Murray is a penniless former slave owner and Otis Young is a quick-witted former slave. No Uncle Tom, Young can barely stand the sight of his erstwhile oppressor. Since straight-shooting hands are hard to find, he takes Murray on as a temporary sidekick. Whitey does not cotton to the setup either, and the two bristle at each other even as they foil a gold heist. A mutually respectful, but hostile, black-white relationship is a departure for TV "realism." Whether it can be made as durable as the warm, three-year-long buddyship of I Spy's Bill Cosby and Robert Gulp is questionable.

-- The Mod Squad (Tuesday, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). This show, also integrated, offers a trio of attractive but unlikely soulmates: a tousle-haired beat from Beverly Hills (Michael Cole), a lithe Afro cat from Watts (Clarence Williams III) and a blonde waif (Peggy Lipton). As undercover agents for the fuzz, they sometimes find that the badge is not their bag. Nonetheless, they manage to balk a blackmail-and-kidnap plot involving a gubernatorial candidate (his daughter is on acid). The dialogue staggers to keep pace. Sample: "Ain't it the mother truth?" Despite the fresh faces--particularly Williams'--Mod Squad is at best an old-fashioned caper in a contemporary setting.

-- The Ugliest Girl in Town (Thursday, 7:30-8 p.m.). Transvestite jokes? Skirts of Milton Berle! The plot: A young Hollywood office boy (Peter Kastner) falls in love with a visiting British starlet. She digs him, and he yearns to follow her back home, but he has hardly enough dough to get to Pismo Beach. Then a London modeling agency spots some photos of Kastner dressed as a hippie, concludes that he/she is the kookiest twist to haute couture since Twiggy. In London, Kastner quickly becomes What's Happening. Here and there, Ugliest Girl amusingly needles the fashion pacesetters, but the boy-in-a-dress style of mayhem is, well, slipshod.

-- Here Come the Brides (Wednesday, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). This replay of the bartered-bride theme overwhelms by sheer force of numbers alone. No fewer than 100 marriageable young women are brought by mule boat from New England to Frontier Seattle. Their chaperons are a handsome, roughhewn logger (Robert Brown) and his two younger brothers (David Soul and Bobby Sherman). The girls are alternately mutinous and romantic--and indomitably pure. Though it offers a vapid, powder-puff glimpse of pioneering life, Brides might just enjoy a long and profitable television honeymoon.

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