Wednesday, May 25

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* "Runaway Bay," in which a Manhattan career girl (Carol Lynley) returns home searching for peace and finds problems down on the farm.

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Van Dyke's three older children, along with six writers of the series, appear on the last episode of the five-year-old show, which now sinks into summer reruns.

Thursday, May 26

LONDON PALLADIUM SPECIAL (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A series of six specials taped at the celebrated music hall, with Bonanza's Lome Greene playing host to Roger Moore (the Saint), Singer Millicent Martin and Comedian Derek Dane.

Friday, May 27

COURT-MARTIAL (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). One of a number of British-produced thrillers imported by the networks to fill the midsummer's quiet nights. This one is The Defenders in uniform.

Saturday, May 28

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The Grand Prix of Monaco for Formula 1 racing cars, at Monte Carlo, and the Masters Surfing championships, at Redondo Beach, Calif.

SECRET AGENT (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). The English version of Amos-Burke-with-an-umbrella gets involved in a plot to trap a navy man suspected of selling information.

THE BARON (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Scotland Yard's man on this beat is a dealer in antiques whose undercover work is masked by the Chippendales he sells.

Sunday, May 29

RELIGIOUS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-11 a.m.). The 900th anniversary of Westminster Abbey seen, most particularly, through the preparations and participation of the Men and Boys Choir of Washington Cathedral.

SOUTHERN BAPTIST HOUR (NBC, 1:30-2 p.m.). "Of Picks, Shovels, and Words," a special on how the Bible has been used to guide archaeologists in locating and excavating ancient sites, filmed on location in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

THE AGE OF KENNEDY (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). First of a two-part special on Kennedy, narrated by Chet Huntley. Henry Fonda reads excerpts from Kennedy's early writings.

THE SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9 p.m.-midnight). Jennifer Jones got an Oscar for this rendering of The Song of Bernadette.

Monday, May 30

THE AVENGERS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A bowler-hatted Briton and a mod Honey West explore "The Murder Market," which is masquerading as a marriage mart.

THEATER

On Broadway

IVANOV. Chekhov's first full-length play takes the pulse of a life-sick anti-hero consumed by boredom and narcotized by talk, the opiate of the Russian gentry. John Gielgud's acting and direction somewhat jangle the playwright's night music of the soul, but not enough to drive away a lover of Chekhov's genius.

MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! invites the literate mind to a banquet with a consistently ironic, sometimes macabre American wit. So thoroughly does Hal Holbrook immerse himself in the psyche of Clemens that his performance seems like an uncanny transmigration of souls.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Before a man can fully embrace the future, he must be willing to endure a painful relinquishing of the past. In an honestly affecting portrait of an Irish emigre, Playwright Brian Friel depicts a young man caught between the pull of old memories and the beckoning of new hopes.

SWEET CHARITY. Dancer Gwen Verdon once more erupts like a volcano on the U.S. musical stage, and Bob Fosse's choreography is sizzling with sly social comment, bubbling with inventive wit. Neil Simon's book, alas, lies dormant.

CACTUS FLOWER. If love is a delicate blossom in the desert of life, the French may claim to be the most happy of horticulturists. This romantic comedy, expertly transplanted from the banks of the Seine by Abe Burrows, cleverly tramples the grapes of mirth.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. George Kaufman and Moss Hart's 30-year-old tour de farce is a riotous reminder that absurd may mean wacky, not world-weary, that humor, after all, may be amusing rather than bruising.

RECORDS

Opera HANDEL: SERSE (Westminster; 3 LPs). One of the greatest boons of the expanding recorded repertoire was the debut last year on vinyl of Handel's Rodelinda; now comes his tragicomic opera Serse, or Xerxes, which begins with the famous aria Ombra mai fu, generally called Handel's Largo, a song of praise to a plane tree. The deep, dark, mellifluous voice of Alto Maureen Forrester as the Persian king is set off by the light, bright vocal acrobatics of Lucia Popp, a rising young Czech soprano. Brian Priestman is the conductor, using the Vienna Radio Orchestra and Chorus and an excellent harpsichord accompanist.

VERDI: DON CARLO (London; 4 LPs). The usual cuts have been restored and all five acts are here, sung by an assemblage of stars: Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Grace Bumbry. Their voices often outshine their characterizations (though Bumbry is good as Eboli and Ghiaurov as Philip), and the solos are stronger than the ensembles. Conductor Georg Solti generally keeps rein on the sprawling tragedy, which unfolds with dark grandeur and erupts with fiery excitement in the auto da fe in the great Spanish square.

PUCCINI: TURANDOT (Angel; 3 LPs). For this generation at least, Swedish Soprano Birgit Nilsson has firmly appropriated the treacherous role of the icy Oriental princess. Seven years ago, Nilsson recorded Puccini's last opera for RCA Victor, and now has repeated her triumphal performance. The plus value in the new set is Tenor Franco Corelli, who in brilliance and power is Nilsson's match, and as Calaf can credibly convert the cruel princess into a woman in love. The earlier recording is superior, however, having Erich Leinsdorf as conductor and a generally better cast, including Renata Tebaldi as the second female lead and Georgio Tozzi as the Tartar king.

AARON COPLAND: THE TENDER LAND (Columbia). An abridgment of Copland's only major opera, set on a Midwest farm in the '30s. Though the characters sing of gingham and the smell of stew, the music is not homespun, being tenderly lyrical. A small-scale work suitable for opera workshops, it was recorded by soloists from the New York City Opera, with the Choral Art Society and the New York Philharmonic, Copland conducting.

GLUCK: ORFEO ED EURIDICE (RCA Victor; 3 LPs). An opera for people who do not like singing, Orfeo is long on dances, and its best-known aria (in the Dance of the Blessed Spirits) is reserved for a flute. Renato Fasano and the Virtuosi di Roma give a pastel but translucent orchestral performance, almost otherworldly, as befits the score. Unfortunately, the singers are a bit too bloodless, even the promising young mezzo, Shirley Verrett, who sings Orfeo.

CINEMA

LES BONNES FEMMES. All the humor, horror and futility in the lives of four commonplace Parisian shopgirls fill a downbeat but poignant tale by French Director Claude Chabrol (The Cousins).

MORGAN! An improper bohemian misfit (David Warner) goes ape and declares gorilla war on his former wife (Vanessa Redgrave) in a wayward British comedy that only occasionally gets out of hand.

HARPER. As a private eye focused on a kidnaping case, Paul Newman revives the Bogart tradition in lively style, with seedy-to-sumptuous local color supplied by Julie Harris, Arthur Hill and Lauren Bacall.

BORN FREE. How a tamed beast finally learns to survive in the wilderness is recalled in an enthralling adventure film, faithfully adapted from Joy Adamson's bestseller about her life with Elsa the lioness--superbly photographed on location in Kenya.

JUDEX. A sophisticated French tribute to period pop art, based on the serialized adventures of a half-forgotten superhero who liked to vanquish villains and save maidens in the silent-screen era.

THE GIRL-GETTERS. Bird hunters fill their quota at a sleazy English seaside resort, where one young beachnik (Oliver Reed) shows a singular flair for wasting his youth.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. The life of Christ, taken word for word from Scripture by Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist with a refreshingly earthy idea of how to do Bible movies.

SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. A brilliant and graceful comedy about a young actress (Felicity Kendal) who encounters romantic complications while touring India with a tatty Shakespearean company left over from the British colonial era.

DEAR JOHN. Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren bases his tender, lusty lesson in love on the urgent biochemistry between a roaming sailor (Jarl Kulle) and a girl (Christina Schollin) having a weekend fling.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. This rueful, Oscar-winning tragedy about the friendship between an Aryan carpenter (Josef Kroner) and an old Jewish shopkeeper (Ida Kaminska) in Nazi-dominated Czechoslovakia incisively depicts the ravages of war on one man's conscience.

BOOKS

Best Reading EARTHLY PARADISE, by Colette; edited by Robert Phelps. Colette (1873-1954) was the most important woman novelist (Cheri, Gigi, Mitsou, Claudine) the French have produced in a century; this magnificent collection of her random reminiscences shows that she was just as important as a memoirist, a female Montaigne who drank the cup of folly till she tasted the dregs of wisdom.

1066: THE STORY OF A YEAR, by Denis Butler. Nine centuries ago, the Battle of Hastings cost King Harold I of England his kingdom and his life--a price, as Author Butler suggests in this excellent first book, that may have been dearer than England knew.

PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. An account of Hemingway's saddest years, told by a friend who shared them.

OMENSETTER'S LUCK, by William H. Gass. A portrait of the Puritan as a dirty old man. Philosophy Professor Gass pits a preacher crazed by suppressed sex and overt malice against a man who is simply good. Comic fireworks result.

THE BONAPARTES, by David Stacton. Napoleon may have been an ogre to his enemies, but his Corsican kin, disposed about the vacant thrones of Europe, made up a menagerie of bizarre misfits. Historical muckraking at its lighthearted best.

THE DOCTOR IS SICK, by Anthony Burgess. Burgess' late-blooming agility as a humorist is evident in this 1960 novel, just now reaching the U.S. in the wake of his growing reputation.

THE LAST BATTLE, by Cornelius Ryan. As he proved in his D-day marathon, The Longest Day, the author is a thorough reporter, and his account of the fall of Berlin is an encyclopedic narrative.

A GENEROUS MAN, by Reynolds Price. The novel romps with rare grace and good humor through the tangled woods of adolescence, first love and new manhood as a North Carolina farm boy hunts for his lost brother and a wandering python.

Best Sellers

FICTION

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

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. The Double Image, MacInnes (5)

4. The Source, Michener (4)

5. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (3)

6. The Comedians, Greene (7)

7. Tell No Man, St. Johns (6)

8. Those Who Love, Stone (8)

9. Menfreya in the Morning, Holt (9)

10. The Billion Dollar Brain, Deighton

NONFICTION

1. The Last Battle, Ryan (1)

2. In Cold Blood, Capote (2)

3. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (3)

4. The Last 100 Days, Toland (4)

5. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (5)

6. Games People Play, Berne (6)

7. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson

8. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (8)

9. The Fatal Impact, Moorehead

10. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (7)

* All times E.D.T.

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