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Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The Bismarck and the Hood go down, and the Nazi U-boats rule the waves in "Struggle at Sea."
THEATER
Midway in a middling Broadway season, the most notable new plays include Rhinoceros, by Eugene lonesco, France's perky avant-gardist, whose farcical-satirical assault on conformity is somewhat obvious and farfetched, but also exhilarating—particularly when Star Zero Mostel virtually turns himself into a rhinoceros onstage; All the Way Home, a life-affirming adaptation of James Agee's Knoxville chronicle, A Death in the Family; Advise and Consent, a superficial but suspenseful political melodrama based on the Allen Drury bestseller; A Taste of Honey, an episodic but unblinkingly truthful first play about a desperately lonely girl, brilliantly performed by Joan Plowright; and Period of Adjustment, a comedy in which Tennessee Williams turns marital counselor in an unprecedentedly optimistic work that displays more deftness than depth. Among last season's worthiest survivors: Lillian Hellman's corrosive Toys in the Attic; Paddy Chayefsky's sensitive, mystic and comic The Tenth Man; and The Miracle Worker, the superbly acted story of young Helen Keller and her teacher.
Of the musicals, Camelot is very much worth seeing for the splendor of its sets, the best of its Lerner-Loewe tunes, and its stars, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews. Do Re Mi, with a story of jukebox racketeering that is mere rundown Runyon, is almost saved by Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker; and the best of the lot may well be the pert, piquant French import, Irma La Douce, with delightful Dynamo Elizabeth Seal. The holdovers —not counting the perennials such as My Fair Lady and The Music Man—are topped by Fiorello!, an unpretentious reminiscence of the Little Flower, and Bye Bye Birdie, a sprightly spoof of an Elvis-type monster.
In a class by themselves: An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, a sharply satirical potpourri of skits and improvisations, and Show Girl, a slight but sprightly revue in which Carol Channing neatly gets her hoofs, lungs and, above all, her sharp teeth into show business.
*All times E.S.T.