Critics' Voices

TELEVISION

ANYTHING BUT LOVE (ABC, March 6, 9:30 p.m. EST). Hannah and Marty (Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis) finally end the will-they-or-won't-they tension and spend a night together. It's a welcome new turn for TV's smartest relationship comedy.

YEARBOOK (Fox, debuting March 7, 8:30 p.m. EST). Cameras follow the lives of real students at Glenbard West High School, eavesdropping on everything from math classes to private boy-girl moments. One video-verite show too many from the Fox network.

THE FRED ASTAIRE SONGBOOK (PBS, March 8, 9 p.m. on most stations). His singing was as heavenly as his dancing, as this wonderful tribute shows.

ART

BLACK ART: ANCESTRAL LEGACY, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. An exhibition of 156 sculptures, paintings and other works by 49 20th century African-American and Caribbean artists who examine, explore and celebrate their heritage through the interpretation of ancient secular and spiritual motifs. Through March 24.

EASTMAN JOHNSON: THE CRANBERRY HARVEST, National Academy of Design, New York City. This small show focuses on the studies and early paintings that culminated in Johnson's famed, and newly restored, work depicting Nantucket berry pickers. Through March 24.

MUSIC

. KITCHENS OF DISTINCTION: STRANGE FREE WORLD A&M). A band of genially berserk Brits, turning out tunes with wit and -- hard to believe in this dance-mad age -- melody. With echoes of mid-period Beatles and backlash art-rock, this is pop with heart and promise.

MARCUS ROBERTS: ALONE WITH THREE GIANTS (Novus/RCA). How old do you have to be to take on a giant? David was a mere slip when he brought down Goliath, but jazz pianist Marcus Roberts, 27, isn't interested in confrontation. He's paying tribute to Ellington, Monk and Morton, re-interpreting them in a way that's full of warmth, empathy and musical surprise.

EVGENY KISSIN: CARNEGIE HALL DEBUT CONCERT (RCA Red Seal). From his daringly slow opening statement of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, and throughout this recital of challenging works by Liszt, Chopin and Prokofiev, the Soviet prodigy, now 19, shows a potential for future greatness, with a command of tone, dynamics and phrasing that is always at the service of musical ends.

MOVIES

L.A. STORY. Steve Martin's Annie Hall: that's one way to describe this blithe, witty take on the most American of cities. Martin, who wrote the film, stars as a TV weatherman with a head for romance and a hard time finding it. Victoria Tennant, Marilu Henner and Sarah Jessica Parker offer the feminine options, and Brit TV maven Mick Jackson supplies the directorial dazzle. But this is a very personal Martin project -- the sweet-souled, nonstop-funny testament of a native Angeleno. Sly and soulful, it's the comedy that dares to be dippy.

1900. In 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci assembled an all-star cast (Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster, Stefania Sandrelli) for a history of 20th century Italy that played like a Marxist Gone With the Wind. Now the full version -- all 5 hr. 11 min. -- is premiering in the U.S. Don't miss the grandest folly of a great director.

ETCETERA

JOFFREY BALLET. For its New York season, this troupe is on a youth kick, with brand-new ballets from young choreographers Christopher d'Amboise, Alonzo King, Charles Moulton and company member Edward Stierle. Through March 17.

THE KISS. Smetana's idyll gets its first professional U.S. production from the Sarasota (Fla.) Opera. Czech melodies, Bohemian brio, English surtitles. Performances through March 12.

THEATER

THE SPEED OF DARKNESS. Guilt about his conduct in Vietnam comes back, in the literal form of an accusatory Army buddy, to haunt a successful middle-aged man in this gripping Broadway drama by Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Tesich (Breaking Away). Stephen Lang (A Few Good Men) repeats his electrifying Chicago performance as the accuser.

WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN. In Europe, Robert Wilson is the most famous American stage director. In the U.S., the anti-verbal, visually lyrical elder statesman of the avant-garde is little known. He designed, mounted and adapted for Harvard's American Repertory Theater this spellbinding Ibsen dreamscape about an artist looking back and summing up.

HENRY IV. Both parts of Shakespeare's chronicle play in rotation at Joseph Papp's Public Theater off-Broadway, in a fiercely idiosyncratic staging by Papp's heiress apparent, director JoAnne Akalaitis, featuring a multiracial cast and minimalist music by Philip Glass.

SMALL WORLD

In Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos (HarperCollins; $25), Dennis Overbye has discovered a fiendishly clever way of tricking readers into understanding cosmology, the study of the entire universe. Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts -- exotic particles, black-body radiation and the like -- Overbye draws intimate portraits of such people as Allan Sandage, once a "lean, Jimmy Stewartish" youngster and now the grand old man of cosmology; David Schramm, a Porsche-driving physicist and ex-wrestler; and Yakov Zeldovich, a sort of "Zorba the Cosmologist," who dazzled colleagues with his intuitive genius and women with his charm. By describing the quirky personalities and brilliant minds of these and other scientists, Overbye reveals cosmology to be a human and passionate enterprise. This lures the reader into wanting to know something of the science as well, which Overbye explains with care and clarity. The book should be required reading for anyone who is terrified by scientific literacy.