THE FALL TV SEASON : AND PLAYS . . . AND PLAYS . . . AND PLAYS : THE GAMES THAT TELEVISION PLAYS

Game shows are again the sizzling ticket among syndicated TV series this fall.

They’re so hot that the Sunday edition of The Times regularly carries a page of classified ads soliciting game show contestants. “Love Connection” offers “a chance for a little hot summer romance,” for example, while “Tic Tac Dough” advertises “unlimited” bucks and “Headline Chasers” headlines “huge winnings.”

“Headline Chasers?” Yes, a new game show (weekdays at 2:30 p.m. on KHJ-TV Channel 9, beginning Sept. 23), created and hosted by that man of infinite teeth, Wink Martindale, and bought by a whopping 140 stations. Contestants are required to fill in the blanks of headlines and identify voices and blurred faces of famous personalities. It’s grueling. On the pilot, contestants had to identify the voice of Richard Nixon.

No one will ever accuse the TV industry of being slow-paced. “Headline Chasers” hasn’t even made its debut, and already it’s being revamped.

Also new is “Catch Phrase” (starting Saturday at 7 p.m. on KCBS-TV Channel 2), whose players must identify such old saws as “sing on key” and “lunch break.” The pastel Art James is on hand to exchange dull barbs with guests. There’s an appropriate catch phrase for this show: Don’t bother .

Among new syndicated game shows, though, there is none more ghastly than “The New Newlyweds,” a revival of TV’s brutal argument against marriage (weeknights at 7:30 on KCOP Channel 13, beginning Sept. 16). That game show beast Chuck Barris is back, raunchier than ever, and emcee Bob Eubanks is again his point man, facing still more of America’s feuding young marrieds. Not yuppies, but yappies.

“Couple No. 2: She says she was fully clothed, but he was kissing and pawing her while he was naked as a jaybird when his father unexpectedly walked in.” Oh ho ho.

They slobber. They snicker. They nag. They bicker. Nyeh Nyeh Nyeh-Nyeh Nyeh. These are the people you see at parties wearing lampshades on their heads--probably to hide their lobotomies.

Stations are also looking beyond game shows to other kinds of first-run shows.

One is “Small Wonder,” which premiered Saturday at 7 p.m. on KTTV Channel 11, a high-tech/low-talent weekly sitcom about a 10-year-old robot girl named Vicki whose human family tries to hide her real identity from the nosy neighbors. Such hijinks.

The Brits are coming, too. And what a mixed batch.

Public TV stations are the buyers of the as-yet-unscheduled “Yes, Minister,” the slashingly funny comedy that lampoons the British government. The British do make the best TV.

And the worst. In that category, now being syndicated in America for the first time, is cop-chic “Dempsey & Makepeace.” Premiering Tuesday at 8 p.m. and airing thereafter at 8 p.m. Sundays on KTLA Channel 5, it stars American Michael Brandon as a “brash, street-wise” New York police detective who talks “like dis” and Glynis Barber as a very Brrrrrritish London cop who talks rathuhhhh different.

Dempsey is sent abroad, reluctantly joining Makepeace in an “elite” undercover unit of Scotland Yard. Of course they hate each other. Of course they make a boffo team.

The irony is that “Dempsey & Makepeace” is a banal clone of U.S. formula TV that has come back like a boomerang to haunt the fall syndication season. “Dis London,” Dempsey asks a fellow New York cop on the way to Kennedy Airport, “is it like L.A.?”

Dis ain’t good.

Another intrinsically American TV form is “infotainment,” the mishmashing of entertainment and news into something that seems to be news but isn’t, and seems to be entertainment but isn’t.

That describes INDAY (Independent Daytime Network), a two-hour, mid-day strip whose components are a half-hour news program, a Ron Hendren-hosted magazine, Robert and Rosemary Stack hosting a life-styles-of-the-filthy-rich segment and Fred Willard, Melanie Chartoff and Ken Minyard hosting “What’s Hot! What’s Not!” It will air weekdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Channel 5, starting Oct. 7.

What may be hot is Paramount’s $22-million “America” strip, a one-hour, satellite-delivered “news companion” that has been bought by 105 stations, including KCBS Channel 2, where it debuts weekdays at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 16. Hosts Sarah Purcell, McLean Stevenson and Stuart Damon have so much fun you can hardly stand it.

“America” is designed as an irresistible lead-in to the early news. The “America” pilot, though, is highly resistible. It’s an hour of . . . stuff: College kids chug-a-lugging beer while watching TV reruns, a flushing toilet for Barbie dolls, male poster hunks, Purcell getting dunked by the U.S. Olympic water polo team, an interview with convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and so on and so on. Then back to the studio in time for a round of guffaws.

Shut up already, “America.”

Finally, there’s the weekly “Star Games,” hosted by Bruce Jenner and Pamela Sue Martin, with Lite Beer pitchmen Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith on hand as “commissioners.” It began Sunday at 4 p.m. on KNBC Channel 4.

The charge that “Star Games” copies ABC’s long-running “The Battle of the Network Stars” is patently false. In “Star Games,” stars of TV series compete in athletic contests, unlike “The Battle of the Network Stars,” where stars of TV series compete in athletic contests.

And you thought there was no originality in TV.