Events of any serious cultural significance on network TV are limited, these days, to a smattering of expensively produced specials. Educational TV attempts ,o pick up the slack. Among its current oferings at various dates and times on all 104 of the National Educational Television affiliates: Paris 1900, six one-hour plays by French Playwright Georges Feydeau adapted by a British repertory group; U.S.A.: The Opposition Theater, six 30-minute modern American dramas sampling the satirical and anti-Establishment wares of such groups as the Second City and the Living Theater; and V.S.A. Dance, several 30-minute ballets choreographed by the likes of George Balanchine, Anna Sokolow and Glen Tetley.

Wednesday, May 4

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Murder in a seaport city with Jack Lord and Shirley Knight.

Thursday, May 5

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). John Paul Jones has Robert Stack playing the naval hero, Charles Coburn as Ben Franklin, Macdonald Carey as Patrick Henry, Jean Pierre Aumont as Louis XVI, and Bette Davis as Catherine the Great. But they had "not yet begun to fight" when they ran out of film.

Saturday, May 7

THE KENTUCKY DERBY (CBS, 5-6 p.m.). Live and in color from Churchill Downs. Interviews with jockeys and trainers as well as footage from races run earlier this year precede the great event; comments by the winning trainer and rider follow it.

SECRET AGENT (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A mysterious death in the jungles of India brings British Agent John Drake (Patrick McGoohan) out to raj over the corpse.

Sunday, May 8

OPEN MIND (WNBC in New York, noon-12:55 p.m.; elsewhere on ETV Stations at subsequent dates and times). "A Profile of Henry Luce," a biographical study of and an interview with TIME Inc.'s Editorial Chairman.

THE JOURNALS OF LEWIS AND CLARK (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). A special documenting and dramatizing the 1804-06 expedition to explore the West. Repeat.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). TV Producer David Susskind has got Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock to repeat the parts they originally created on Broadway in 1949 in Arthur Miller's Pulitzer-prizewinning play (which was also made into a movie, starring Fredric March and Miss Dunnock, in 1952).

Monday, May 9

THE HILL COUNTRY: LYNDON JOHNSON'S TEXAS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The President himself conducts the cameras on a tour of his part of central Texas. He shows and tells about the old fort that became the site for what is now Johnson City, the family cemetery and his grandmother's bravery during an attack by Indians, the house in which he was born (now a museum), the school he attended and his teacher (who will be interviewed on the show), his present ranch and the surrounding countryside--from the Pedernales River to Pack Saddle Mountain. Mrs. Johnson also makes a brief appearance on the program to recollect the story of their whirlwind courtship.

THEATER On Broadway

MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! As Actor Hal Holbrook brings the man from Hannibal, Mo., back to life in a one-man show, he seems a snow-thatched Jove who has laid aside punitive thunderbolts for lightning strokes of irony and mirth. The format is that of Twain's turn-of-the-century lectures; the wry humor is of the moment.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! On the eve of a departure, memories wrestle with longings, the familiar competes with the unknown. Irish Playwright Brian Friel gives a compassionate rendering of the conflict in one young man as he prepares to leave Ireland for the new world.

SWEET CHARITY is kept aloft by Dancer Gwen Verdon, a one-woman whirlwind propelled by Director Bob Fosse's breezy choreography. Unfortunately, Neil Simon's book about a goodhearted doxy duped by love is woefully becalmed.

CACTUS FLOWER. Like most Gallic romantic comedies, this farce is based on three things: lies, lies, lies. A Don Juanish dentist (Barry Nelson) tells them with aplomb. His gullible mistress (Brenda Vaccaro) accepts them with compassion. And his waspish nurse (Lauren Bacall) uncovers them with delight.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. The gifted APA repertory company puts a new wrapping on a 30-year-old comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The Sycamore family may not seem hilariously outlandish today, but it is still fondly engaging--a tender nosegay tossed to an earlier age of innocence.

RECORDS

For Children

The best children's records on today's market, even those in pop jackets, owe something to another day--old games, old rhymes, old writers, even oldtimers reading very old yarns. Choice selections:

THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT (Wonderland). This tops all other versions of the oft-told Beatrix Potter classic. Vivien Leigh tells it as if she had grown up at the foot of the old fir tree, and Lyricist David Croft and Musician Cyril Ornadel hit it off like Lerner & Loewe. It takes a hard heart not to melt at naughty Peter's wistful "Why do I do it?" Pity that this team has cut only two other Potter records: The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck.

DR. SEUSS PRESENTS . . . (RCA Camden) If I Ran the Zoo's menagerie of Flustard beast and Bustard bird will keep the youngsters wide-eyed--and the flip-side Sleep Book is guaranteed to make them go to sleep with the other yawning ninety-nine zillion, nine trillion and two creatures in it.

WITH A BEATLE BEAT (Golden) is a new twist for Mother Goose. The lively tempo is sure to tickle youngsters all the way up to teen age, and the lyrics should amuse the small fry jaded by the old nursery rhymes. Best by far: the old woman who feels the pinch of a one-room shoe and moves with all 33 children into a three-room army boot.

THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HERSELF read by Boris Karloff (Caedmon). One painless way to break the comic-book habit and get the kids back to Kipling is to let this gentle old Frankenstein do it for you. All about the cave dwellers, and how the lady of the house domesticates a dog, a horse, a cow--and finally a cat, which proves a match for her wits.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (Golden). A useful little platter to have around the house before cutting the cake. Its 15 favorite games from Blindman's Buff to Simon Says will keep the children busy and mother blissful for a tuneful 20 minutes each side.

OSCAR WILDE FAIRY TALES (Caedmon) read by Basil Rathbone, who believes that "an artist's voice is like a musical instrument." He uses his like a full orchestra and reads The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant and The Nightingale and the Rose in tones that range from the staccato of a snare drum to the whisper of a violin.

THUMPER'S GREAT RACE (Disneyland) brings back Bambi's old forest friends in a new adventure that will charm younger children. School's out, and the little animals can't think of a thing to do; so W. O. Owl organizes a handicap race in which Toby the Tortoise wins a moral victory but loses the race by a hare.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (Caedmon) read by Ed Begley, whose voice rumbles along like Ol' Man River, bringing back the sights and sounds of childhood to grownups and taking the youngsters on a storybook trip with Joe Harper, Huck Finn and Tom as they float down the mighty, star-gemmed river. Prospective runaways should hold off till early summer when a companion piece called Tom Sawyer Adventures with Injun Joe will be ready for their knapsacks.

CINEMA

BORN FREE. Elsa the lioness, tamed and untamed, bounds through a vivid movie re-creation of Joy Adamson's bestseller, superbly photographed in Kenya.

MORGAN! After their divorce, an eccentric London artist (David Warner) sets out to court his socialite ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave) according to the law of the jungle. Their battle of the sexes is way, way out but surprisingly hilarious, poignant and civilized.

HARPER. A bleary private eye (Paul Newman) seems to view the world through the bottom of his drinking glass much as Bogart used to do, but Director Jack Smight revives a grand old tradition in slick '60s style. Pamela Tiffin, Robert Wagner and Lauren Bacall are among the beautiful-but-damned folk at hand.

THE GIRL-GETTERS. Youth's gotta-keep-busy restlessness fills this British beach movie about a hot-weather Lothario (Oliver Reed) who sets his own rules for the summer games and ultimately loses by them.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. With a script based on Scripture and a cast of nonprofessional actors, Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist, retells the life of Christ as an earthy social drama, happily avoiding the pretentious piety of most big-screen Bible epics.

SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. U.S. Director James Ivory takes a wry, wistful look at fading British influence in India while ostensibly concerned with a love triangle that disrupts an English Shakespearean troupe on tour.

DEAR JOHN. Love and lust merge in Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren's clever, subtly wrought valentine to a sailor (Jarl Kulle) and a girl (Christina Schollin) whose weekend passion turns out to be more than sin-deep.

THE GROUP. The Roosevelt era is brought giddily to life by eight delightful young actresses in this entertaining movie version of Mary McCarthy's tattletale bestseller about some of the surprises in store for Vassar's class of '33.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. In a small, poignant masterwork from Czechoslovakia, Nazi terror eventually poisons the friendship between a warmhearted old Jewess (Ida Kaminska) and a decent Aryan nonentity (Josef Kroner) whose courage falters under stress.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE DOCTOR IS SICK, by Anthony Burgess. A rogue philosopher whose comic novels also bite, Burgess conducts a tour along the perimeters of reality.

PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. A lively account of how the most famous literary man of his generation worked, played, loved and died, told by an old friend with candor and affection.

THE LAST BATTLE, by Cornelius Ryan. An always exciting, often terrifying, day-today chronicle of the fall of Berlin and the final agonies of Hitler's Third Reich.

A GENEROUS MAN, by Reynolds Price. A rambling man hunt through the North Carolina pinewoods provides the setting for this subtle, solid novel of a boy's growth into manhood.

A PASSIONATE PRODIGALITY, by Guy Chapman. This memoir of life and death in the trenches is an authentic classic of World War I, an elegy for a generation, written unsentimentally and unforgettably.

THE FATAL IMPACT, by Alan Moorehead. History becomes moral drama in this engrossing study of the effect of the European Enlightenment on the primitive societies of the Pacific.

ACCIDENT, by Nicholas Mosley. This literary jigsaw puzzle about an Oxford philosophy don has its spellbinding moments, but some of the pieces are missing.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (2 last week)

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (3)

3. The Source, Michener (4)

4. The Double Image, Maclnnes (1)

5. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (5)

6. The Comedians, Greene (6)

7. Those Who Love, Stone (7)

8. Tell No Man, St. Johns (8)

9. The Billion Dollar Brain, Deighton (9)

10. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (10)

NONFICTION

1. The Last Battle, Ryan (2)

2. In Cold Blood, Capote (1)

3. The Last 100 Days, Toland (3)

4. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (4)

5. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (7)

6. Games People Play, Berne (5)

7. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (6)

8. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (8)

9. I Saw Red China, Hobbs

10. The Fatal Impact, Moorehead (10)

* All times E.D.T.

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