25 FRIDAY RAP CITY RHAPSODY (PBS, 10-11 p.m.) Here's a useful primer on rap music for anyone who thinks this pop genre began with the 2 Live Crew and M.C. Hammer. Producer Akili Buchanan offers the viewer a history of rap as well as an analysis of it, drawing on sharp-witted interviews with the novelist Ishmael Reed and San Francisco disc jockey and critic David ''Davy D'' Cook. Seasoned rap fans may find it funny that Buchanan has decided to offer subtitles for all of the rap music excerpts presented here. But it's also realistic-let's face it, your average PBS fan is not likely to be down with the latest street lingo; subtitling will draw many viewers into the music and neatly precludes the eternal pop-music complaint, ''You can't understand the words!'' On the other hand, the printed, on-screen definitions of rap slang did seem a bit much. ''Dissing=Debasing'': okay. But ''Bragging =Braggadocio''? Rap City Rhapsody was produced by San Francisco public television station KQED, resulting in a pronounced West Coast skew to the rappers profiled. And from Rhapsody, you'd never know that it took Los Angeles and Oakland nearly a decade to produce rap scenes as vital and distinctive as the ones ! going strong throughout New York City in the late '70s. This quibble aside, Rap City Rhapsody is the sort of enlightened presentation that can't help but widen the music's audience. B+ -KT
THE AVENGERS (A&E, 6-7 p.m.) The first of 42 ''lost'' episodes of the psychedelic '60s spy series, starring Honor Blackman (best known as a Bond bombshell Pussy Galore in Goldfinger) in the role of Patrick Macnee's pre- Diana Rigg sidekick. Originally broadcast in Britain in 1962; never before shown in the U.S.
DARK SHADOWS (NBC, 9-10 p.m.) A jealous Julia (Barbara Steele) spikes Barnabas' (Ben Cross) anti-vampirism serum to trip up his seduction of Victoria (Joanna Going).
TENNIS (ESPN, 9-11 p.m.) Women's final of the 1991 Australian Open, live from Melbourne.
DARK JUSTICE (CBS, 11:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.) A new late-night action-adventure series starring Ramy Zada as a frustrated judge (those pesky Miranda rulings!) who turns into a ruthless vigilante crime buster when night falls.
26 SATURDAY
PRISON STORIES: WOMEN ON THE INSIDE (HBO, 10-11:30 p.m.) Women on the Inside consists of three half-hour films, each overseen by a different director. Donna Deitch (Desert Hearts) offers Esperanza, about a young boy (Edwin Maldonado) who starts dealing drugs once his mother (Total Recall's Rachel Ticotin) is sent to prison. In Parole Board, director Joan Micklin Silver (Crossing Delancey) presents a portrait of a woman (Blaze's Lolita Davidovich) who, years before, killed her husband for beating her repeatedly; now up for parole, the woman isn't at all sure she wants to leave the camaraderie of her friends in prison to live with her hostile, drug-taking daughter (Elizabeth Moss as the child, Virginia Keehne as the teenager). Both of these films are well acted but predictable and mawkish. The last one is the best: Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization) has directed New Chicks, about two prisoners played by Rae Dawn Chong (Choose Me) and Annabella Sciorra (Reversal of Fortune). When Chong becomes pregnant, Sciorra tries to help her get the baby enrolled in the prison nursery, for which there's a long waiting list. New Chicks does a good job of conveying the hierarchies of status among prisoners. In general, though, more care should have been taken when planning this anthology-why is it that all three stories are about women agonizing over their children? Narrowing the subject matter this way is an unnecessary limitation that only serves to stereotype imprisoned women's lives. Surely there are interesting stories to be told about women inmates who don't have kids. C -KT
