`The Mozart Mystique': You Might Find Pbs Special Cute

If you're one of those who felt Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart received a bum rap in Peter Shaffer's ``Amadeus,'' you'd be well-advised to skip ``The Mozart Mystique,'' a two-hour PBS special at 10 tonight on KCTS-TV and repeated at 10 a.m. Sunday. It also airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on KTPS-TV.

This special, a co-venture between American and West German TV, is one of the first to celebrate Mozart's 200th birthday - and they can only get better.

It isn't that the music isn't fine - there are examples of 'most every style in which the young genius wrote - but there is more emphasis upon host Peter Ustinov than there is on Mozart. Writer Israela Margalit obviously believed we'd be more interested in Mozart, the character, than in Mozart, the composer. And to this end Ustinov is at it his very worst, coyly pretending to be both Wolfgang Mozart and his father, Leopold, as well as imitating several of the women who figured in Mozart's lifetime.

Cute is one word you seldom think of in connection with Mozart - but it's the best word to describe these two hours. If you can survive the chatter, the music is rewarding, although there's a tendency to jump into the middle of a work and not offer much explanation about it. And there's a pianist, who performs in one of the concertos, who gives new meaning to the phrase ``carried away.''

Short takes: Cute is also the bane of Shelley Duvall's ``Mother Goose Rock 'n Rhyme,'' a special airing on cable's Disney Channel at 7 p.m. tomorrow. It features a host of big names doing bit parts in a kind of hip look at Mother Goose - but the script by Mark Curtiss and Rod Ash and the direction by Jeff Stein seem at odds: None of them have reached a consensus on whether to appeal to little kids or teen-agers.

It's ostensibly a search for Ma Goose (Jean Stapleton) who has disappeared from Rhymeland. Her son, played in a goofy Pee wee Herman style by Dan Gilroy, should have paid more attention to Duvall, who makes a wonderful Little Bo Peep. Garry Shandling and Teri Garr are wonderful as Jack and Jill while Cyndi Lauper is funny as the Mary who had a little lamb.

But their style of humor is at odds with the film's overall tone, which is geared for smaller children. The result is a lot of jokes small kids won't get and overly cute scenes that only the tiniest tots will find enjoyable.

Of all the places and times to be a policeman, Mardi Gras in New Orleans must be on the worst - or at least it looks like it in the hour special edition of Fox's ``Cops,'' at 8 p.m. tomorrow on KCPQ-TV. Just trying to move through the mobs of revelers is bad enough; trying to round up drunks, pickpockets and fistfighters is almost impossible - not to mention the tourists who keep hitting on a pretty New Orleans policewoman. This hour will probably persuade you to stay far, far away from Mardi Gras.

Peter Gaulke, Taylor Mason and Rondell Sheridan may not be big names in comedy - yet - but they are all more entertaining than many of the so-called comedy stars, as they prove in a Showtime special, ``Comedy on Campus,'' hosted by Ed Begley, Jr., premiering at 11 p.m. tomorrow on cable, with repeats set for May 25 and 31 and June 6 and 12.

``The Test of Time: From HIV to AIDS,'' a fine special that cable's Lifetime will repeat at 3 p.m. tomorrow, uses several individual stories to make a strong case for early testing, showing that many who may be HIV positive could have longer and better lives if they had been tested earlier. It also emphasizes that danger from AIDS is in risk behavior rather than risk groups. As a kind of basic primer on AIDS, this is an outstanding hour.

CBS has decided to plague viewers with a ``Return to Green Acres,'' at 9 tonight on KIRO-TV, a TV movie I endured until the following exchange: Oliver Douglas (Eddie Albert): ``I'm growing great alfalfa for fodder.'' Lisa Douglas: (Eva Gabor): ``That's nice, dahliing, and next year you can grow something for mudder.'' Life is too short to waste any of it here.

Video notes: Joanne B. Ciulla of the Wharton School of Business has some provocative thoughts about business ethics when she visits with Bill Moyers on PBS' ``World of Ideas'' at 7 tonight on KCTS-TV. . . . CBS has a new ``Garfield'' special, ``Feline Fantasies,'' at 8:30 tonight on KIRO-TV. . . . Arts & Entertainment's weekly ``Revue'' salutes the Tony nominations in the program airing tonight at 5 and 9 on cable. . . . The focus is on telemarketing on ABC's ``20/20'' tonight at 10 on KOMO-TV. . . . Cable's Lifetime channel begins a new season of its ``About Men, For Women'' series, tonight at 10:30, right after this week's episode of ``Molly Dodd'' at 10.

hn Voorhees' column appears daily in The Times.