WORTH NOTING ON TV

Please check local listings. Programs subject to preemption by Persian Gulf coverage.

FRIDAY

Dance in America (PBS, 9-10 p.m.): The Alvin Ailey troupe's rich past and strong future is reflected in two contrasting works, collectively titled ``Steps Ahead'': a Charlie Parker tribute choreographed by the late Ailey, and ``Episodes,'' by rising choreographer Ulysses Dove.

SUNDAY

Big (ABC, 9-11:06 p.m.): A 12-year-old kid's wish comes true when he wakes up one morning as a full-grown man and finds there's more to this adult business than he bargained for. The touching and often hilarious potential of this 1988 film - having its network premi`ere - is skillfully realized in Tom Hanks's evocation of adolescent mentality in an adult body.

TUESDAY

Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House (HBO pay cable, 10-11 p.m.): In this harshly explicit documentary on Pennsylvania's Lewisburg prison - one of only three maximum-security federal penitentiaries - Emmy-winning filmmakers Susan and Alan Raymond use cinema-verit'e to explore life in a ``tomb for the living.'' Even with grim expectations, the show will prove shocking in its details - and in what it says about our prison system.

Frontline (PBS, 9-10 p.m.): `The Man Who Made the Supergun' is a darkly fantastic tale of espionage and technology that happens to be fact. The brilliant scientist Gerald V. Bull was building the world's longest-range cannon for Saddam Hussein when he was murdered in Brussels. Did Israeli intelligence do it? This documentary produces new evidence in trying to answer this and related questions.