(2 of 3)
Something Special (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A series of musical and dramatic vignettes under the auspices of the American Child Guidance Foundation, with a high-priced guest list including Janet Blair, Nat King Cole, Dave Garroway, Sam Levenson, Garry Moore and Arlene Francis.
Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). In the second episode of the 26-part series, First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill helps direct the Norwegian campaign, sees the invasions of Holland and Belgium vindicate his warnings, is called to the Prime Ministry.
THEATER
Advise and Consent. Although too obviously melodramatic and politically shallow, the adaptation of the bestselling novel about a Cabinet nominee's battle for Senate confirmation often makes lively, suspenseful theater.
Period of Adjustment. Unexpectedly off the Streetcar track and concluding with togetherness instead of cannibalism, Broadway's longtime laureate of sex, Tennessee Williams, has written a deft domestic comedy about two couples' marital adjustment; the result is lively but superficial, and as often forced as forceful.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Coiling around each other like flowers, teen-agers or snakes, Manhattan's superb improvisationists prove that they can make hilarious fun of anything from the P.T.A. to the old Tennessee Williams.
A Taste of Honey. An unblinking look at some of the world's misfits and misfortunes, set down in leaping language by Britain's Shelagh Delaney and further enhanced by the stunning performance of Joan Plowright.
Irma La Douce. Elizabeth Seal, playing Broadway's most charming chippy, keeps this small-scale musical kicking its heels with Parisian verve and pertness.
The Hostage. A jolly but self-indulgent romp in which Playwright Brendan Behan proves himself more than a buffoon if less than a philosopher.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Sermons and Soda Water, by John O'Hara. For years the author has written heavily and at length; these three related novellas about New York and Gibbsville, Pa. are clear, short and masterful.
Tourist in Africa, by Evelyn Waugh. In a two-month trip early last year, the author returned to the scenes of some of his early, brilliant satires, brought back scattered but first-rate sketches of the gaudy human specimens he met.
Spring Song and Other Stories, by Joyce Gary. In these stories, as in the author's novels, nothing seems to be contrived and everything seems worth hearing about, whether the subjects are men at war, children, or a dodderer on a park bench.
The Light in the Piazza, by Elizabeth Spencer. A succinct, unusually fine novel about Americans abroad confronts a Southern woman and her mentally deficient daughter with an Italian family's ruthlessness and odd humaneness.
The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme, by Alun R. Jones. A scholarly, well-wrought biography of the eccentric English intellectual who took all knowledge for his hobby and who, despite his death at the age of 34 on the Western Front in 1917, was to become a neo-orthodox shaper of the 20th century consciousness.