Radio: The New Shows

Compared with the bloodcurdling children's programs, last week's new shows for adults were a relatively tame lot:

The Halls of Ivy (Tues. 8:30 p.m., CBS) spent a leisurely 30 minutes introducing its cast of characters. Ronald Colman, as president of Ivy College, was asked to appear nervous while awaiting the decision of the board of trustees as to whether or not he would be rehired for his job. This was a proposition lacking in suspense, because if Colman didn't get the presidency, there would be no television series.

Sherlock Holmes (Mon. 7 p.m., NBC) devoted most of its time to introducing Ronald Howard (36-year-old son of the late Actor Leslie Howard) as Holmes and H. Marion Crawford, grandson of Novelist F. Marion Crawford, as the bumbling Watson. Filmed in London and Paris by Sheldon (Foreign Intrigue) Reynolds, the opening show had a nice period flavor, but the script, written by Reynolds, was inferior to even the feeblest efforts of A. Conan Doyle.

Omnibus (Sun. 5 p.m., CBS) returned for its third season of promised "experimental" TV. The only out-of-the-ordinary feature was a TV book review of Fred Allen's Treadmill to Oblivion, which tells the story of the life and death of his famed radio show. Allen read some acid commentary on the industry (including the old saw that "advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission"), and there was a pleasant nostalgia to his re-creation of Allen's Alley. The remainder of Omnibus' 90 minutes was devoted to some mildly interesting but hardly experimental films: the escape of two ballet dancers from behind the Iron Curtain and a U.S. travelogue.

Spectacular No. 4 (Mon. 8 p.m., NBC) was the best spectacular yet. Directed by Hollywood's Otto Preminger and starring Ginger Rogers in three short plays by Noel Coward, the show started slowly with a vaudeville skit that was notable for the expertness of Ginger's cockney accent. The second playlet, Still Life, co-starred Ginger with Britain's Trevor Howard, but it lacked the pathos of either the 1936 Broadway original (starring Noel Coward and the late Gertrude Lawrence) or the movie version, Brief Encounter. But in the third number, Shadow Play, Ginger was romantically believable in the touching dream sequence. Gloria Vanderbilt posed beautifully in the small part of Ginger's rival.