WORTH NOTING ON TV

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

FRIDAY

George Burns' 95th Birthday (CBS, 10-11 p.m.): It's just another milestone to the Oscar-and-Emmy-winning actor-comedian, who was already singing for pennies on the sidewalks of New York in 1910. But friends and fellow stars justifiably pull out all the stops in this reminiscent special.

SUNDAY

Sarah, Plain and Tall (CBS, 9-11 p.m.): The Hallmark Hall of Fame - network TV's longest-running drama series - opens its 41st season with a dramatization of Patricia MacLachlan's prizewinning book. In the early 1900s, Sarah (Glenn Close) leaves her home on the Maine seacoast for the Kansas prairie, bringing love and comfort to two kids and their widowed father (Christopher Walken).

Son of the Morning Star (ABC, 9-11 p.m.): The viewpoint of both Plains Indian and US Cavalry are reflected in this carefully researched two-parter about the controversial General George Custer and his role in the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn. Based on Evan S. Connell's nonfiction best-seller, the drama unfolds partly through the voices of Custer's wife, Libbie, and a Cheyenne woman named Kate Bighead. (Part 2 airs Monday).

TUESDAY

Playwrights Theater (A&E cable, 9-10 p.m.): A&E starts the second season of a commendable venture in TV drama: specially produced one-act plays by acclaimed American writers. The season premi`ere is Arthur Miller's harrowing 1987 work ``Clara,'' with Darren McGavin as a bereaved father undergoing a typically Milleresque process of self-discovery.