WORTH NOTING ON TV

January 16, 1992

SUNDAY

Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore (CBS, 9-11 p.m.): In a rare TV role, Walter Matthau plays the same small-town lawyer he did in "The Incident," an emotionally credible World War II drama in which he defended a German prisoner-of-war accused of murder. It had an unusual moral dimension that won it the Emmy for best dramatic program in 1990, and additional awards for writers Michael and James Norell. This time Matthau befriends a woman wrongly held in a mental hospital - in a script by the same w riters. MONDAY

Roots (The Family Channel, 8-10 p.m.): A record 131 million viewers tuned in to this legendary series when it premiered in 1977. Based on Alex Haley's book, the 200-year epic of a black family's history - from West Africa to America - dramatized slavery's evils, boosted black pride, and virtually defined the capacity of a TV drama to raise public consciousness. It now re-airs in six two-hour segments, with brief comments by Mr. Haley himself and an interview with him at the end of the series. WEDNESDAY

Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas (PBS, 8-9 p.m.): This powerful National Geographic special captures the intermittent yet deadly warfare between these two African predators. Dereck and Beverly Joubert spent three years in the Savuti region of Botswana, filming both the individual lives of lions and hyenas and their intricate society. The resulting footage is full of haunting images that form a kind of primeval drama about their life cycles, as they go about the daily - and nightly - business of survival .Please check local listings for all programs, especially those on PBS.