The Year's Most

MOST CONSISTENTLY REWARDING SHOW: 60 Minutes, the CBS magazine program, which features TV's best interviewer, Mike Wallace. Week-in, week-out (except during the N.F.L. season), the show blends investigative reporting, responsible social commentary and oddball features to provide the most instructive, entertaining hour in broadcast journalism.

MOST GRATIFYING STATISTIC: The drop in the audience for pro football. If the trend continues, maybe 60 Minutes could stay on all year long.

MOST SATISFYING COVERAGE OF A SPECIAL

EVENT: Rhoda's wedding.

BEST SINGLE PERFORMANCE: Anthony Hopkins' merciless yet endlessly engaging portrayal of an ambitious man in The Edwardians: Lloyd George. Alone it made PBS's apparently irreducible trade deficit with the BBC worthwhile.

MOST DISMAYING NEW PROGRAM: Feeling Good, the Children's Television Workshop's ghastly attempt to talk up good health practices, mostly by talking down to its audience. It is 19th century do-gooderism dressed up in 20th century electronic finery.

MOST SOLID OLD SALT OF THE EARTH: Edward Asner as News Editor Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Not even Walter Cronkite has more deftly represented the reality principle in a medium that mostly has nothing to do with it. Asner is not only the rock on which this great sitcom rests but sometimes seems to be the only reliable source of common sense in all of prime time.

MOST EXPERT MADE-FOR-TV MOVIE: The Law, with a street-smart performance by Judd Hirsch as a deputy public defender, some of the snappiest dialogue this side of The Maltese Falcon and a well-observed view of our clanking machinery for meting out criminal justice. The film was a model of what can be accomplished in a throwaway form.

MOST WELCOME RETURN TO THE MEDIUM:

Button-bright, flip-lipped James Garner --back from a dismal movie career--in The Rockford Files, a modestly witty private-eye series.

MOST REWARDING LONG-RUN DRAMAS:

Tie between Upstairs, Downstairs and The Richard Nixon Show (canceled).

MOST DEVOUTLY WISHED-FOR EPISODE:

An hour on The Waltons in which Pop and Grandpa sell green lumber to the builders of an orphanage, Mom entertains a traveling salesman and John Boy's siblings discover him committing an unnatural act back of the sawmill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.