THE STANDOUTS THAT EMMY OVERLOOKED

Emmy Award nominations are a slice of fantasy, a respite from news of Hiroshima, AIDS, South Africa, drought and baseball’s labor problems. But there’s no escaping the occasional goofiness of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences members who choose the nominees.

Most of this week’s nominations make sense. As always, though, they include some capital crimes. Worst by far is the inexplicable omission of Tim Pigott-Smith as a candidate for lead actor in a special or series.

“The Jewel in the Crown” was nominated for best limited series and deserves to win easily at the awards ceremonies, which ABC will telecast Sept. 22. Ignored, though, was Pigott-Smith’s soaring performance as Ronald Merrick, the pivotal character in this brilliant “Masterpiece Theatre” rendering from Britain’s Granada Television.

With one exception, in fact, the entire, extraordinary cast of “The Jewel in the Crown” was slighted. Its only nominee was Dame Peggy Ashcroft for her splendid work as the kind-hearted missionary Barbie Batchelor, and you can bet that she was cited only because she won an Oscar earlier this year for a similar role in “A Passage to India.”

Ashcroft is no more deserving of consideration for “The Jewel in the Crown” than are Fabia Drake or Judy Parfitt or Susan Woolridge or others in the cast. Were they not as good as the nominated Ann Jillian in “Ellis Island”? Was Art Malik’s powerful performance in “The Jewel in the Crown” inferior to Richard Burton’s sneeze of a role in “Ellis Island”? Does it snow in Tahiti?

Pigott-Smith deserves more than a nomination. He deserves the Emmy--over such tough competition as Richard Crenna in “The Rape of Richard Beck,” James Garner in “Heartsounds,” Richard Kiley in “Do You Remember Love” and George C. Scott in “A Christmas Carol.”

At the very least, though, Pigott-Smith should have been nominated instead of Richard Chamberlain, whose biggest contribution to “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” was his charismatic presence in a homburg.

Other significant omissions included NBC’s “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story” and, especially, “A Christmas Carol” and “An Englishman Abroad,” which were ignored as best dramatic special. Either was a better choice than the unexceptional “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story.”

“A Christmas Carol” on CBS was a bold interpretation of the Charles Dickens classic. And the BBC’s “An Englishman Abroad” was probably last season’s best single hour, a sparkling account of actress Coral Browne’s 1958 chance Moscow encounter with famed British defector Guy Burgess. Alan Bates as Burgess and Browne as herself were superb, as were Alan Bennett’s screenplay and John Schlesinger’s direction. Alas, all were ignored.

Were the academy voters put off because “An Englishman Abroad” aired on cable’s Arts & Entertainment channel six days before its public television debut? Or was it just too small to bother with?

Also passed up in the nominations was the lustrous season opener for “Saturday Night Live,” the wheeziest howl of a 90 minutes this side of “SCTV.” Johnny Carson gets a variety/music/comedy nomination over this ?

Although Billy Crystal got a deserved nomination for his work on “Saturday Night Live,” omitting the equally deserving Martin Short was not so mahhhvelous, darling.

And the academy members overlooked public TV’s ambitious “Wonderworks” as best children’s program and nominated NBC’s “Punky Brewster”? The banal “Punky Brewster” is now being defined as a kids’ show, probably because NBC knows no one older than 7 is interested.

Series switch hats when it suits them. With “Crazy Like a Fox” and “Moonlighting” nominated as comedies, it’s only fair that many of prime-time’s alleged comedies be reclassified as the dramas they seem to be.

The academy is traditionally awed by bigness. Interestingly, though, it correctly rejected two of the season’s enormously hyped miniseries, NBC’s grand-but-plodding biblical epic “A.D.” and the handsome but factually suspect “Atlanta Child Murders” on CBS.

Yet two CBS offerings that were nominated for best limited series--the ho-hum “Ellis Island” and the spacy “Space”--reflect last season’s absence of top miniseries other than “Jewel in the Crown.”

Two other nominees in the miniseries category, the syndicated “A Woman of Substance” and CBS’ semi-revisionist “Robert Kennedy and His Times,” were above average, but still far beneath the previous season’s “Reilly: Ace of Spies” and “Concealed Enemies” on PBS.

In the Step on a Network When It’s Down Category, meanwhile, it’s noteworthy that ABC’s Emmy nominations have shrunk along with its ratings. Not only were its 41 nominations third behind CBS and leading NBC (and less than one-third of NBC’s total), but also only 10 of those were in so-called creative categories. That makes ABC’s season almost a total flop.

In the Displaced Persons Category, Michael J. Fox has a supporting comedy actor bid, although he’s the real star of NBC’s “Family Ties” and merits an Emmy as lead actor.

In the Odd Category Category, look at these nominees for best information series: those two superlative PBS series “The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth” and “The Heart of the Dragon,” Barbara Walters’ celebrity interview specials on ABC and the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight” and “At the Movies.”

Don’t you love it? Exquisite documentaries about China and the entire Earth confronting movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and their pet skunk, Aroma.

This being TV, I’ll bet on the skunk.