So What’s New on England’s Telly? : Television: From ‘Not Mozart’ to ‘The Obituary Show,’ British viewers find some innovative and cerebral shows among the fall offerings.

Well, let’s see here--just a quick flip through the TV listings to see what’s new for the fall season:

There’s “Not Mozart,” which teams up internationally renowned composers with noted film and television directors to produce weekly films that incorporate the 18th-Century composer in some way. One story focuses on the theft of Mozart’s singing skull.

There’s “Lifesense,” a series about the relationship between animals and humans--from the animals’ point of view. (“What is it like to be a snake being paraded through the streets in an Italian snake festival?”)

And there’s “The Obituary Show,” in which living celebrities, working under the premise that they’ve just died, assist in producing a program that looks back on their careers and private lives. Among the first participants will be actress Glenda Jackson and director Ken Russell.

Just like their American counterparts, British viewers are watching a new season unfold on the telly. And like the big U.S. networks, U.K. broadcasters are offering new schedules full of domestic sitcoms, cops and court dramas and even reality shows such as “Lawyers,” which follows real British barristers and solicitors as they go about their work.

But where the U.S. networks rarely stray from those tried-and-true formulas, British TV executives also are serving up programs that seem a bit more innovative and cerebral, or at least different.

Don’t go looking for ABC, CBS or NBC to place “J’Accuse” on their prime-time schedules any time soon. The program, which debuted last year, gives artists and critics a forum to rip apart some popular icon they believe is overrated. The film “Citizen Kane” and the writer Jane Austen will be among the subjects yanked off their pedestals this season.

“J’Accuse” came under attack itself last year after a segment in which a group of rock music writers argued that the Rolling Stones were getting old and irrelevant and that their best work was behind them. Critics of the show complained that the premise was so obvious, it was a waste of TV time.

Other shows airing this fall include “The Gravy Train Goes East,” a comedy about a group of Euro government bureaucrats who are sent to the chaotic Eastern European nation of Slaka, which has just shed communism and is learning the ways of capitalism and democracy.

In “Challenge Anneka,” do-gooder host Anneka Rice is given a certain amount of time, say 36 hours, to complete some charitable task, such as renovate a church in time for a wedding or build a children’s hospital playground. As the clock ticks away on screen, she phones and organizes volunteer workers and suppliers, supervises the work site and always makes sure the last nail is hammered before the time runs out.

The makers of the acclaimed drama series “Upstairs Downstairs” are back this season with the lush period piece “The House of Elliot,” the story of two sisters running their own fashion house in 1920s London.

Added to the wealth of current- affairs programs in Britain are the new series “Secret History,” which investigates some of the murkier events of the recent past, and “South,” which features documentaries made by filmmakers from the Southern Hemisphere, including Latin America, India, Africa and China.

Of course, not everyone in Great Britain will be sitting around this fall watching Sudanese cinema and Italian opera. In fact, there won’t be many at all. Most viewers will be watching the goings-on around the firehouse (“London’s Burning”), the police beat (“The Bill”) or the hospital (“Casualty”).

In fact, the four biggest programs in the country are all soap operas--the working-class British soaps “Coronation Street” and “Eastenders” and the Australian suburbia of “Home and Away” and “Neighbors.”

But the difference between the TV networks in the United States and the United Kingdom is that programming diversity is a mandate of the British system. If the British have the best television in the world--and they certainly are not shy about claiming they do--it is not by happenstance.

There are four terrestrial broadcast networks, of which two are specifically designed to offer alternative programming. The British Broadcasting Corp., funded primarily by the annual license fee paid by everyone who owns a television, operates two channels. BBC-1 is its mainstream channel and, despite being noncommercial, aims to build the largest possible audience. Its commercial counterpart and competitor is ITV, an affiliation of regional television companies that both produce and broadcast programs. Each company provides programs that are “networked” to the other ITV companies.

Counterbalancing the “popular” programming of BBC-1 and ITV are the alternative networks BBC-2, which is noncommercial, and Channel 4, which is commercial, though nonprofit.

Like the American networks, the British broadcasters are undergoing their share of problems. The BBC has been consistently losing the ratings battle to ITV and is desperate to capture more viewers. BBC executives also are slashing budgets in some departments, although they have increased spending on new shows this season.

“It doesn’t want to lose its perception as a popular channel,” says Sue Griffin, deputy editor of the British trade magazine Broadcast. As part of its battle plan, she notes, BBC-1 is returning to high-quality period dramas, which it had stopped producing some time back.

In addition to “The House of Elliot,” BBC-1 also will provide a gush of costumes in “Ashenden,” a new series taken from W. Somerset Maugham’s stories about the fictional World War I spy. The BBC also is banking heavily on “Trainer,” starring Susannah York and David McCallum in a series set in “the glamorous world of horse racing.”

The ITV companies have been hit badly by the recession, with advertising down dramatically. They also had been gripped by confusion and uncertainty as they waited to learn whether their broadcasting licenses would be renewed for another 10 years. This year, the British government decided to offer regional broadcast licenses through an auction system, with the highest bidder winning a regional franchise, which begins in January, 1993, provided they pass a vague “quality threshold” test.

The results, announced Oct. 16, left four existing ITV companies without franchises, including Thames Television, which serves London, and TVS Entertainment, which owns the American TV production company MTM Entertainment.

Although ITV is spending a great deal more money on programs this season, say industry analysts, its schedule is considered “safe” with new seasons of successful shows and big Hollywood movies. Notable for PBS viewers: There’s a new season of “Rumpole of the Bailey.”

Channel 4 also is suffering from the recession and has had to cut program budgets. What’s more, the network has undergone a recent spate of bad publicity. First it was revealed that the network lost nearly $9 million by depositing the sum into BCCI a few days before the bank collapsed in scandal. Then, word leaked out that a handful of top Channel 4 executives were paid a total of nearly $2 million as a bonus not to join other television companies, creating an uproar among program producers who had suffered budget cuts.

Beside showing series like “South” and “Secret History,” Channel 4 is the main repository for American series in Britain. It is the home of “Cheers,” “L.A. Law,” “Empty Nest” and “Roseanne.” Channel 4 viewers must wait until January to see the last season of “thirtysomething.” They don’t know Gary’s dead.

Although these American shows receive some respect in Britain, they are relegated to one of the alternative channels because they are considered more cultish than mainstream. “ITV and the BBC feel that American series don’t perform as well as they did in the past,” says Griffin, of Broadcast. Gone are the days when the British went gaga over “Dallas” and “Dynasty.”

These days, there appears to be only one American program that can truly be classified as a hit in the United Kingdom. After finding great success with it last year, ITV even became a partial financial backer of the show.

So, congratulations “Baywatch.”