HERE COMES THE JUDGE--AND ANGRY FANS

The chance of Dick Van Dyke’s being dubbed The Man You Love to Hate is still fairly remote--but in three weeks he’s going to take a stab at the title.

In the premiere episode of Andy Griffith’s new NBC series “Matlock,” airing Sept. 23, Van Dyke plays a judge presiding over the trial of a young man accused of murdering his girlfriend. Griffith, playing a criminal attorney in the series, defends the man.

Van Dyke’s judge, by name Carter Addison, looks upright and decent--how could he look otherwise, being played by this Emmy award-winning actor. But he’s a real rat.

“It’s great,” said Dick Van Dyke the other day, “Andy called me and asked me to do it and I jumped at it.

“I so rarely get the chance to play the bad guy, and this guy is really bad. He tries everything to get an innocent man convicted.” Only once before has Van Dyke played a heavy--in an episode of “Columbo.” “Peter Falk let me be the killer in that,” he said, “I was a photographer who shot his wife.”

What was the public reaction?

“People came up and berated me in the supermarket,” he said. “One lady hit me with her purse. I don’t know what they’ll do when this episode is aired.”

Van Dyke, an active, healthy-looking 60-year-old, doesn’t work too often these days, preferring to spend his time sailing his sloop at Marina del Rey. And although he enjoyed the switch to drama in “Matlock,” he tends to play down his acting ability.

“I’m not a dramatic actor. Light comedy is what I do. When I have attempted drama--as in Stanley Kramer’s ‘The Runner Stumbles’ (in which he played a priest), I hated my performance.

“One critic wrote I was wooden in the movie. I was. You see, Stanley didn’t want any of my usual mannerisms to show through, in case people would start to laugh. The result was I felt constricted and became absolutely wooden.

“The movie didn’t do well and afterward if I knew another actor who was playing a priest, I always watched his performance. All seemed to have the same problem I did. Even Robert De Niro seemed subdued when he played one in ‘True Confessions.’ ”

Van Dyke, who says he enjoys his life these days--”I vegetate well”--admits that if the right sort of sitcom presented itself, he’d like to do it. “I’ve been talking to various producers and writers,” he said, “so maybe we’ll come up with something. But until we do, I’ll settle for the wind and the water.”

So--no regrets?

“Yes--one. Cary Grant asked me to be in ‘That Touch of Mink’ with him. And I said no. Can you believe it? I turned down Cary Grant.

“Don’t ask me why. I’ve blanked it out of my mind. So he got Gig Young instead, who was better than I’d have been anyway. But wasn’t that stupid of me?”

When Van Dyke, who often appeared on the best-dressed lists, was starring in “Bye Bye Birdie” on Broadway, he wore his own suits on stage.

“After one show there was a knock on my dressing-room door and in walked Cary Grant,” he said. “I’d never met the man in my life but he just brushed past me and went over to my wardrobe and started going through my suits as a joke.

“I’d just been given some best-dressed award and it was hanging on the wall. Cary went over and examined it. Then he wrote on it simply: ‘Well! Cary Grant’ I still have it. Can you imagine I passed up the chance of playing opposite him? Yes, that’s one regret. . . . “

DOUBLE ACT: Elizabeth Bennett, a well-known actress in her native Britain, now has the distinction of appearing in the same television role more or less simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. Her part as a London housekeeper in NBC’s “You Again?” starring Jack Klugman actually originated in the British TV show “Home to Roost.”

Then she had to rush home to do further episodes of the British series. Now she alternates between the two countries, keeps two homes, makes a lot of money and enjoys it all immensely.

“I have to amend my performance only slightly for here,” she said, “I still use the same accent. In Britain it’s recognizable as South London. Here, of course, it’s just foreign.”

She enjoys working in Los Angeles.

“It’s so efficient,” she said. “And when you’re working and have a small child (she has a son, 2) that’s important. Also I like the way a character is allowed to grow on American TV, to develop and broaden. Back home that doesn’t happen.