Critics' Choice

TELEVISION

SERENGETI DIARY (PBS, April 12, 8 p.m. on most stations). The ever popular National Geographic specials conclude their season with a look at the people and wildlife of this beautiful East African wilderness.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (NBC, April 16-18, 9 p.m. EDT). Phileas Fogg, that globe-trotting Victorian gent, is back in a remake of the Oscar-winning 1956 film based on Jules Verne's novel. Pierce Brosnan, Lee Remick and Peter Ustinov head the proverbial all-star cast.

A DEADLY SILENCE (ABC, April 16, 9 p.m. EDT). One of the most tragic consequences of child abuse is recounted in this docudrama about a Long Island, N.Y., teenager who hired a friend to kill the father who had molested her for years.

MUSIC

ROSANNE CASH: HITS 1979-1989 (Columbia). She's got a half-past-4-in-the- morning voice, and a knowing way with a song that can make any listener wish the night would go on forever.

ELVIS COSTELLO: SPIKE (Warner Bros.). God's Comic, Stalin Malone, Miss Macbeth: even the titles sting. The songs are like an acid bath; no quarter given or expected.

THE AMHERST SAXOPHONE QUARTET: BACH ON SAX (MCA Classics). Purists, beware! Your prejudice against unorthodox instrumentation could be shattered by this surprising set of Bach adaptations that has nothing gimmicky about it but the concept.

ANDRES SEGOVIA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE SPANISH GUITAR (MCA Classics). The reviver and master of the instrument as you have never heard him before. Twenty-six digitally reissued performances, dating from 1952 to 1968, drawn from the works of ten Spanish composers.

BOOKS

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (Morrow; $19.95). In this inventive, indignant novel, a boisterous cast and a spirited story line propel a sawed- off Christly caricature through two decades of U.S. foreign policy debacles.

THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan (Putnam; $18.95). A bright, sharp-flavored first novel on the subject of growing up ethnic in the U.S. The topic sounds familiar, but the Chinese spice added to this old recipe is invigorating and refreshingly true.

FIRE DOWN BELOW by William Golding (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17.95). The last leaf of a trilogy begun back in 1980. An arrogant, young 19th century Englishman survives seaborne hardships to arrive in Australia -- and at some condition of self-knowledge.

THEATER

THE WINTER'S TALE. Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Reeve, Alfre Woodard and Diane Venora top an impressive if imperfect off-Broadway version of Shakespeare's fable.

JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE. Director Claude Purdy's backyard realism suits August Wilson's lyric text, at the Los Angeles Theater Center.

ART

NELL BLAINE: RECENT OILS AND WORKS ON PAPER, Fischbach Gallery, New York City. Forty-eight works by a premier American artist whose spontaneous brushstrokes and brilliant colors enrobe nature in a tender intimacy. Through April 26.

LIKE A ONE-EYED CAT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEE FRIEDLANDER 1956-1987, Seattle Art Museum. Surprising perspectives on everyday images -- street scenes, jazz musicians, empty motel rooms, public monuments -- by a modern American master. Through May 7.

TREASURES FROM THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Highlights of the collection built up by British connoisseurs over two centuries at Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam, including paintings by Titian, Rubens and Delacroix, manuscripts, ceramics, sculpture and decorative arts. Through June 18.

GUIDO RENI, 1575-1642, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Underappreciated in the modern era, Reni is restored in this choice, 50-painting show to the high rank earlier centuries accorded him as luminous colorist and elegant classical stylist. Through May 14.

MOVIES

HIGH HOPES. A dotty old woman fights to keep her home amid the crush of gentrification. Working with a cast that has helped improvise its roles, British director Mike Leigh creates a group portrait of characters who live, breathe and squawk their wayward humanity on the margins of Thatcher's England.

ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. Lovers waltz in midair, a servant outruns a bullet, and the King of the Moon (Robin Williams) loses his head in this wonder-filled fantasy from Terry Gilliam.