Shake off those summer doldrums. It's premiere week, and the networks offer a host of new programs for the fall season.

Friday, September 20

THE NAME OF THE GAME (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.*). A series of original screenplays, starring Gene Barry, Robert Stack and Tony Franciosa, which is about the behind-the-scenes operation of an international publishing empire. Tonight's episode: "The Fear of High Places" with Guest Stars John Payne, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jill Donahue. Premiere.

CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Hawaii Five-O. The old Hawaiian Eye private-detective series of a few seasons back is reborn with a new title and a new star (Jack Lord). In the two-hour opening installment, our gumshoe uncovers an underworld plot to wreck the U.S. intelligence system in the Pacific. Next week an hour-long episode picks up the series in another time slot. Premiere.

Saturday, September 21

ADAM 12 (NBC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame, puts in another plug for the Los Angeles Police Department as producer of a series about two uniformed cops. Martin Milner and Kent McCord are the stars. Premiere.

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). A young widow (Hope Lange) and her two children move into a seacoast cottage haunted by the quarrelsome ghost of a 19th century sea captain (Edward Mul-hare). Premiere.

NBC SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9 p.m. to midnight). Becket (1964). Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud in the film version of Jean Anouilh's 1959 drama about King Henry II of England and his friend Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Sunday, September 22

LAND OF THE GIANTS (ABC, 7-8 p.m.). The crew of a rocket-powered transport en route to London from the U.S. strays off course and embarks on a fantastic voyage to a strange planet inhabited by giants. This new series stars Gary Conway, Kurt Kasznar, Don Matheson, Don Marshall, Deanna Lund and Heather Youns. Premiere.

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ AT CARNEGIE HALL (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). The first television concert by the renowned piano virtuoso includes works by Chopin, Schumann, Scarlatti and Scriabin.

ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11:45 p.m.). Zorba the Greek (1964). A grand bacchanalian bash based on a novel by the late Nikos Kazantzakis. Starring Anthony Quinn, Lila Kedrova, Irene Papas and Alan Bates.

Monday, September 23

HERE'S LUCY (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Lucille Ball returns with a new show, but it's the same Lucy. Co-starring Lucy and Desi Arnaz Jr. and Gale Gordon. Premiere.

MAYBERRY R.F.D. (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Ken Berry, the bumbling cavalry officer of "F Troop," returns to play a boondocks farm er from Mayberry, N.C. The series inherits the locale and some of the cast of last year's Andy Griffith Show. Griffith will make guest appearances. Premiere.

THE OUTCASTS (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). Don Murray and Otis Young play a former slave owner and slave who form an uneasy and abrasive partnership as bounty hunters in the West immediately after the Civil War. Premiere.

Tuesday, September 24

THE MOD SQUAD (ABC, 7:30-9 p.m.). Three young hipsters, Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III and Peggy Lipton, join the fuzz as underground agents in a mod war on crime. Premiere.

LANCER (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Murdoch lancer (Andrew Duggan), owner of a vast cattle ranch in Northern California, and his two sons fight off land grabbers in this 1870 vintage western. Premiere.

THE DORIS DAY SHOW (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Doris Day makes her TV debut in a weekly comedy series. Premiere.

60 MINUTES (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). CBS News Correspondents Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace edit a biweekly magazine of the air. The show includes TV documentaries, profiles, features on the arts, and commentaries by guest newsmakers and newscasters. Premiere.

THAT'S LIFE (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A weekly musical about the life of a young middle-class American couple. Robert Morse and E. J. Peaker star as Robert and Gloria Dicksen. George Burns, Tony Randall, the Turtles and Maureen Arthur guest-star. Premiere.

THEATER

On Broadway

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. Tom Stoppard borrows the Mutt and Jeff of the Globe entourage, keeps them in the Shakespearean situation, but endows them with 20th century complexes and complaints. John Wood and Brian Murray revel in the sometimes melancholic, ofttimes witty dialogue.

PLAZA SUITE. The impersonality of a hotel room has been the setting for many a personal encounter. Neil Simon arrives with three short comedies in which Maureen Stapleton and E. G. Marshall play three different couples whose experiences in a Fifth Avenue hostelry range from the wistfully amusing to the farcical.

Off Broadway

THE BOYS IN THE BAND plays all the variations on the theme of homosexuality. Mart Crowley's composition has grace notes of hilarity but ends in a coda of bitter recognitions. Director Robert Moore conducts a finely tuned cast with precision and sensitivity.

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS while his bold songs are sung nightly in Manhattan. Furious at life yet madly in love with it, Brel challenges it with bold imagery, sighs over it in sad verse, embellishes it with melodic observations of sly humor.

YOUR OWN THING. Shakespeare again proves himself to be a most congenial coauthor, as Twelfth Night provides the plot and cast of characters for an inventive rock musical about confusion of the sexes.

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN is a play for those who are lost and lonely. W. B. Brydon, Salome Jens and Mitchell Ryan are a father, his daughter and her almost-lover who see their lives slip away in the course of one lunar arc. Ted Mann's direction transmits much of the tenderness and sadness of Eugene O'Neill's tribute to the isolated.

RECORDS

Pop

As a reaction to the electronic acid rock so much in vogue nowadays, many pop artists have started to simplify their sound, and are discovering the roots of their musical heritage in the process. Some have only returned to the beginnings of hard rock in the 1950s, while others have made the longer journey back to Nashville and country-western music. The Lovin' Spoonful got there first with a song called Nashville Cats. Bob Dylan followed with his famed John Wesley Harding album. And now several groups are on the trail.

MUSIC FROM BIG PINK (Capitol). The band from Big Pink (their home in West Saugerties, N.Y.) plays the best, bone-clean "white soul" anywhere. Along with their musicianship, a lack of self-indulgence plays a large part in the beauty of their sound. The singing is as loose as a hired field hand's and is exactly right on each cut. With The Weight, they pay their debt to country gospel music and then some. The bring-it-on-home chorus, "Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free,/Take a load off Fanny and you put the load right on me," begs for a singalong. This album is an event, and will be regarded as one of the best pops of the year.

SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO (Columbia). Country-western purists are likely to yell "fake" at this album. True, the Byrds don't sound exactly like Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, but they do perform the material with simplicity and in a relaxed, folky manner. Woody Guthrie's socialist hymn to Pretty Boy Floyd gets an authentic bluegrass treatment here, and Blue Canadian Rockies, an old Gene Autry tune, will bring back memories of the Hollywood cowboy astride his horse Champion, galloping through "the golden poppies. . . 'round the banks of Lake Louise." Two Bob Dylan songs, Nothing Was Delivered and You Ain't Going Nowhere, are done with unmannered, country-elegant restraint and are improvements on the original.

I'M GONNA BE A COUNTRY GIRL AGAIN (Vanguard). Buffy Sainte-Marie isn't fooling anyone. She has always been a country girl at heart. Her marvelously adaptable voice takes on a down home inflection, as if she had been raised on corn dodgers and redeye gravy. The best cut is Uncle Joe, a traditional square dance tune in which Buffy starts off playing the mouth bow, followed by a gradual buildup of banjo, bass and fiddle until the entire backing group is involved. The biggest disappointment is Now That the Buffalo's Gone. The waltz tempo with lilting guitar backing totally destroys the electric intensity of the song's drama. In spite of this production lapse, Buffy has found a new home in Nashville.

LAST TIME AROUND (Atco). The Buffalo Springfield have scored again on the last album before they split up. Their transition from folk through folk rock and now to country-western has been smooth going, which is a tribute to their exceptional talents. Stephen Stills, who wrote five of the songs, sings Four Days Gone with down home grit. It is a story song about a boy on the run from "government madness" who can't tell his name because he's "got reason to live." A tinny piano tinkles in the background while a steel guitar twangs out his lament, "I can't even go home. . . and my baby is awaitin'." The graceful admixture of rural blues and country-western sounds makes an admirable final testament to the band's Last Time Around.

WEST (Epic). West spent eight months rehearsing in a deserted theater in Crockett, Calif., before coming up with this album. The music they found there is warm, lyric and natural. Its sound is country-western flavored strongly with folk. Michael Stewart, the vocal backbone of the group, has written a fast-fingered guitar interview with Donald Duck that takes a poke at the Disney menagerie and a swing at President Johnson to boot: "Goofy has so much to say, he changed his place with L.B.J." Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, the album's lead cut, shows what a strong emphasis on clear vocals and tight arrangement can do for a Bob Dylan song. It is certainly the right approach in the further development of West.

CINEMA

HUNGER. This Swedish tale of a writer on the skids in a big city is given depth and resonance by the performances of Per Oscarsson and Gunnel Lindblom.

RACHEL, RACHEL. Puzzled by the present, plagued by the past, a 35-year-old schoolteacher struggles to break out of her bleak existence in this muted film di rected by Paul Newman. As Rachel, Joanne Woodward (Mrs. Newman) brings transcendent strength to her role and lifts the film to classic stature.

ISABEL. Under the direction of Husband Paul Almond, Genevieve Bujold generates an air of adolescent terror in this chilling tale of a young girl growing rapidly to womanhood while tormented by the memories of another life.

ROSEMARY'S BABY. Devil worship in Manhattan and other naughtiness are given loving attention by Director Roman Polanski and Actress Mia Farrow in this sometimes too faithful adaptation of Ira Levin's bestseller.

BOOKS

Best Reading

ANTONIO IN LOVE, by Giuseppe Berto. This is a simple story of boy meets girl, Italian style, which has been given significance and deep resonance by the author's elaborate prose and by his sense of irony.

WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In this collection of short stories and essays, the author, posing as a mod scientist at the controls of a literary time machine, explores the inner and outer spaces of the man-against-machine perplex.

FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL, by Eugene Ionesco. In a chaotic but painfully fascinating self-analysis, a leading playwright of the Theater of the Absurd discusses the neurotic roots of his art.

THE PUMP HOUSE GANG and THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, by Tom Wolfe. Pieces about life styles in America and a chronicle of the cross-country antics of Novelist Ken Kesey and his psychedelic sidekicks, by America's foremost pop-journalist.

THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN, by Ayi Kwei Armah. A Ghanaian novelist's parable about man's struggle for liberty and dignity, staged in post-revolutionary West Africa.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)

2. Couples, Updike (2)

3. True Grit, Portis (3)

4. Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (4)

5. Topaz, Uris (5)

6. Red Sky at Morning, Bradford (6)

7. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (7)

8. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (8)

9. The Senator, Pearson (9)

10. The Queen's Confession, Holt (10)

NONFICTION

1. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (1)

2. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (2)

3. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe (6)

4. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber (4)

5. Iberia, Michener (3)

6. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (5)

7. Soul on Ice, Cleaver

8. The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet, Stillman and Baker (10)

9. The Right People, Birmingham (7) 10. The Naked Ape, Morris (9)

*All times E.D.T.

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