Summer is rerun time on TV, the time when the people who never watch during the winter get a second chance to not watch and the people who were glued to the tube all season discover that most of what they saw isn't worth a second look. A few benefit, however: fans who missed a segment of their favorite series the night the house burned down, virtuous husbands stuck in the city while their wives and children are vacationing at the beach, baseball addicts too bemused by beer to switch off when the game is over, and other misfits.

For this motley assortment of summer viewers, there are occasional items of interest. There is, for example, a chance to check out some of the new show business faces without actually risking an entire evening or bankroll--many of the new nightclub names appear on summer variety programs, while the latest acting sensations often turn up on new interview or old dramatic shows. And since television reviews almost always appear after the fact, sometimes praising specials or particular episodes of series when it's too late to see them, the TV nonregular can catch up on worthy ones he missed.

Wednesday, August 12 ESPIONAGE (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* This series, which was time-slotted against ABC's Ben Casey and CBS's Beverly Hillbillies last season, was one of the year's biggest ratings flops, although it was often good and occasionally excellent. This episode is about an American jazz musician arrested in the U.S.S.R. for spying while on a Government-sponsored tour. Repeat.

Friday, August 14 BURKE'S LAW (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Each week Millionaire-Detective Gene Barry rounds up a collection of murder victims and suspects played by veteran actors, contemporary celebrities and/or glamor girls of recent vintage. This week the line-up includes Chill Wills, Ed Wynn and Broderick Crawford. Repeat.

INTERNATIONAL BEAUTY SPECTACULAR (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Girls from 46 countries arid 44 states will compete for the title of Miss International Beauty and the $10,000 that goes with it, telecast live from Long Beach, Calif.

THE DEATH OF STALIN (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Not to be confused with Playhouse 90's controversial, fictionalized account of Stalin's death, which got CBS News kicked out of the U.S.S.R. in 1958, this NBC White Paper, aired early in 1963, is a straightforward documentary, but the Russians kicked NBC News out anyway. (CBS News was reinstated in 1960, but NBC is still banned.)

Saturday, August 15 ABC's WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The Women's National A.A.U. Swimming Championships in Los Altos, Calif.; the Women's National A.A.U. Diving Championships in Los Angeles; and the Isle of Man Motorcycle Races.

NBC SPORTS SPECIAL (NBC, 5:30-6 p.m.). Highlights of a polo match on the royal polo field at Windsor Castle with Prince Philip's Windsor team playing the Jersey Lilies.

HOOTENANNY (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A chance to catch a new nightclub star, Trini Lopez, who whangs at his guitar and sings.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). The Journey, MGM's 1959 movie about a small group of Western civilians trying to get out of Hungary during the 1956 revolt, features expert, vigorous performances by the entire cast which includes Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Jason Robards Jr., Robert Morley and E. G. Marshall. Color.

Sunday, August 16 SPORTS SPECTACULAR FROM LONDON (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). The Royal International Horse Show.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A day in the life of Rhodes Scholar Winston J. Churchill Jr. (no kin) from North Wales, Pa., one of the many students who have studied, over the years, at Oxford University under the scholarship program set up before his death in 1902 by the South African financier-statesman Cecil Rhodes. Repeat.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE STARS (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). The Great Lovers is a documentary largely composed of scenes from old movies starring Hollywood's great gentlemen of passion from Francis X. Bushman to Marlon Brando. Repeat.

EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Borrowing perhaps from Hamlet, this segment has a TV-show-within-a-TV-show, featuring a rare acting appearance by E.S.,W.S.'s Executive Producer David Susskind, who is typecast as a TV panel moderator. It apparently failed, however, to catch the conscience of King David--he and CBS have since abandoned the entire series. Repeat.

THE RISE OF KHRUSHCHEV (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). NBC's 1963 White Paper on Nikita-the-Bold's ascent to the throne left vacant by Stalin. Chet-the-Huntley narrates. Repeat.

THEATER

The heat of summer withers marginal plays, and the survivors are either of proven merit or exceptional freshness. Best of the survivors:

THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES but the thorns draw blood in this perceptive play by Frank Gilroy about people who live within the closeness of a family without being close.

FUNNY GIRL shines in the refracted light of a brilliant new star, Barbra Streisand, who colors every song and caps her clowning with an indelible stage presence.

HIGH SPIRITS is notable for a slapstick seance conducted by mad Bea Lillie, and for the performance of impish Tammy Grimes, who as a spirit brought back to haunt her husband is about as ghostly as a rainbow.

ANY WEDNESDAY. Sandy Dennis plays a kept doll with an unkempt sense of humor that leads to precious little sex but lots of fun.

HELLO, DOLLY! is a twinkle-toed musical, thanks to Director-Choreographer Gower Champion's dancers and Resourceful Matchmaker Carol Channing.

DYLAN. Alec Guinness probes the special hell in which Dylan Thomas found himself. His brilliant performance is moody, taut with rage and sometimes bright with humor.

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. A pair of newlyweds clamber five flights to a Manhattan flat to coo, tiff and tousle in a variety of dress and undress. Playwright Neil Simon is a laugh merchant who never runs out of lines.

CINEMA

CARTOUCHE. In Director Philippe de Broca's carefree parody of a period saga, Jean-Paul Belmondo is the Gallic, sword-swinging Robin Hood who robs from the rich, gives to the poor, and keeps Claudia Cardinale for himself.

THAT MAN FROM RIO. Fighting off mad scientists, crocodiles and poisoned darts, Belmondo strikes again in Director de Broca's faster--and even funnier--spoof of Hollywood action melodramas.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. At a sunny resort for shady people, Director John Huston guides Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner through some oddly exciting sessions of group therapy devised by Playwright Tennessee Williams.

ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS. This intelligent and tasteful tale of an Indian girl (Celia Kaye) who shares an island exile with her dog is a model of what children's pictures ought to be but seldom are.

A SHOT IN THE DARK. As a maladroit inspector from the Surete, Peter Sellers pursues Elke Sommer through a multiple murder case and turns up fresh evidence that he is one of the funniest actors alive.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED. Young love becomes a savage Sicilian nightmare in a sometimes wildly farcical, sometimes deeply affecting tragicomedy by Director Pietro Germi, previously noted for his brilliant Divorce--Italian Style.

MAFIOSO. Director Alberto Lattuada fills in the background with some gloriously garlicky slices of provincial Sicilian life while Comedian Alberto Sordi struggles soberly with the insidious Mafia.

ZULU. A bit of bloody British history, vintage 1879, makes a grisly good show as a doughty band of redcoats defends an African outpost against 4,000 proud Zulu warriors.

THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN. As a girl from the mining camps, Debbie Reynolds makes waves in Denver society and energetically keeps this big, brassy version of Meredith Willson's Broadway musical from going under.

NOTHING BUT THE BEST. A lower-crust clerk (Alan Bates) hires an upper-crust crumb to teach him the niceties of Establishment snobbery in this cheeky, stylish, often superlative British satire.

THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario Moni-celli's drama about a 19th century strike in Turin has warmth, humor, stunning photography, and a superb performance by Marcello Mastroianni as a sort of Socialist Savonarola.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. By weaving history, topography, marine biology and lyrical gastronomy around the arduous everyday lives of the French seacoast villagers who tend and harvest the Ostrea edulis, Author Clark has written a book-length monograph on the world's most prized oyster with the same beguiling erudition that characterized her Rome and a Villa.

EUGENE ONEGIN, translation and commentary in four volumes by Vladimir Nabokov. Polylingual, and a poet in his own right, Novelist-Scholar Nabokov (Pale Fire) has translated Alexander Pushkin's remarkable 19th century novel-in-verse with a sense of accuracy and range of meaning closer to the original Russian than any previous version. Nabokov's supplementary volumes of notes provide the amusing, exasperating and always impressive sight of a crusty literary personality in action.

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, by Ken Kesey. The author's first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, took place in an insane asylum and proposed the paradox that a good man is hated by lesser men equally in triumph and defeat. This second novel, which repeats the same theme in a larger setting, is less effective for the added dimensions, yet is as exuberant and brawling as the Pacific Northwest lumbering country it describes.

THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN, by Louis Auchincloss. No better chronicler of Massachusetts' elite Groton School and its wise, eccentric founder, Endicott Peabody, could be hoped for. This intricate, fascinating novel about "Dr. Prescott" of "Justin" finally fulfills Author Auchincloss' long promise as a major novelist.

CHILDREN AND OTHERS, by James Gould Cozzens. Many of the stories in this collection also concern a fashionable Eastern boarding school for boys, and if they come off less well, it is that they focus on the institution itself rather than the masters and boys. But Children and Others represents Cozzens at his most controlled, and therefore his best, and the writing is as precise as in Guard of Honor.

TWO NOVELS, by Brigid Brophy. In these elegant and wickedly brilliant novellas about a masquerade ball and a lesbian schoolmistress, Brigid Brophy shows subtlety of both thought and style.

THE FAR FIELD, by Theodore Roethke. A posthumous selection of the poems Roethke wrote during the last seven years of his life celebrates movingly and prophetically "the last pure stretch of joy, the dire dimension of a final thing."

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Le Carre (1 last week)

2. Armageddon, Uris (4)

3. Julian, Vidal (2)

4. Convention, Knebel and Bailey (5)

5. Candy, Southern and Hoffenberg (3)

6. The Rector of Justin, Auchincloss (8)

7. The 480, Burdick (6)

8. The Spire, Golding (9)

9. The Night in Lisbon, Remarque (7) 10. Von Ryan's Express, Westheimer

NONFICTION 1. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway (1) 2. Harlow, Shulman (6) 3. The Invisible Government, Wise and Ross (2) 4. A Tribute to John F. Kennedy, Salinger and Vanocur (3) 5. Crisis in Black and White, Silberman (7) 6. Four Days, U.P.I, and American Heritage (4) 7. Diplomat Among Warriors, Murphy (5) 8. Mississippi: The Closed Society, Silver 9. The Kennedy Wit, Adler 10. A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, Bishop (8)

*All times E.D.T.

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