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The setting for John Mortimer's \"Paradise Postponed,\" an 11-part tale of life in a post-World War II English village, and latest in WGBH's public network \"Masterpiece Theater\" anthology, Rapstone Fanner seems to some a composite community. Mortimer admits it is modeled after Turville, his for- real English countryside hometown and current suburban retreat. And there are vistas drawn resembling those of several nearby villages in the ChilternHills region of Oxfordshire, 40 miles outside of London. [Simeon Simcox]'s sons, Henry, the elder (Peter Egan) and Fred, the younger (Paul Shelley) launch separate investigations into their father's will, and with differing strategies. Henry seeks to break the will, claiming Simcox was insane when he left his sizeable estate to Leslie Titmuss. Fred respects his sire's wishes, and simply is curious.

Like all the best English gentlemen, Sir Michael Hordern has two homes - one in London and another in the country. It was to Rectory Chambers in fashionable Chelsea that I was summoned to meet the veteran character actor. What better location for the Reverend Simeon Simcox of Paradise Postponed. In this he is in tune with John Mortimer, author of Paradise Postponed, who set his satirical drama of post-war Britain amid the leafy glades of Oxfordshire. In every other respect, however, they are poles apart. Mortimer describes himself as a \"champagne socialist,\" whereas Hordern is more of a beer-drinking conservative. Simeon Simcox, the broad-minded banner-waving idealist, is a character dear to Mortimer's heart. But Hordern says flatly: \"I'm not one for causes; I'd never march in a protest or wave a banner.\"

[JOHN MORTIMER]'S autobiography, Clinging to the Wreckage , next only to Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs, is the wittiest and most entertaining memoir I have read in a long while. Mortimer, an accomplished writer and lawyer, is perhaps best known for his Rumpole of the Bailey novels (later made into a television series), loosely based on his own courtroom experiences. Of course what it really does is provide Mortimer with a forum for satiric jabs at the foibles of modern British society. In most cases, he scores telling points. In one of several flashback scenes, for instance, the Rev. [Simeon Simcox] addresses his sons' boarding school, called Knuckleberries:

After visits to Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Moscow, Budapest, Copenhagen and Delhi over a nine-month period in which he interviewed hundreds of affluent people, James is convinced that the desire to acquire additional possessions, amass more money and access greater status has caused a global increase in depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder. According to James, it is not just consumerism that is to blame.

\"Paradise Postponed\" on one level, therefore, presents a family chronicle as many-layered, seriously entertaining and entertainingly serious as \"Brideshead Revisited,\" although, unlike Waugh, the impartial author dispenses charity to all his characters large and small. [Leslie Titmuss, M.P.] is that staple of literature everywhere, a New Man symbolic of a new era -- the pompous egoist who surfaces when the values of the past are crumbling -- and in [John Mortimer] he assumes an antihero's function not unlike the role of Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell's roman fleuve, \"A Dance to the Music of Time.\" Mortimer makes us sympathize with Leslie, nevertheless. It is true that [Simeon Simcox]'s gentle wife remarks of Leslie, who has clawed his way into power, \"Perhaps God made people like Leslie Titmuss so we could know who's nice,\" but the reader also sees Leslie's working-class boyhood when he is humiliated by upper-crust children who will be forced to cooperate with him in adulthood, despite their muffled loathing.

Michael Hordern stars as Simeon Simcox, a well-to-do Socialist vicar in the southern English hamlet of Rapstone Fanner. David Threlfall (remembered for playing the cripple Smike in \"Nicholas Nickleby\") is a lower-middle-class boy, Leslie Titmuss, who jumps up to become a Conservative cabinet minister. It seems that Simcox and Titmuss couldn't have less in common, except that when the Red Rector of Rapstone dies he leaves his fortune to this true-blue minion of Thatcher. Mortimer grew up in an Oxfordshire village not unlike Rapstone. He lives there today, not far from the locations used for \"Paradise Postponed.\" His father, also a barrister, went blind but continued to plead cases before the bar. Mortimer's play recalling his father's life, \"Voyage Round My Father,\" was on PBS several years ago, starring Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates. 1) The Rev. Simeon Simcox (Michael Hordern), his wife (Annette Crosbie) with their sons, [Fred] and Henry ([Paul Shelley] and [Peter Egan], rear). 2) The self-seeking Leslie Titmuss (David Threlfall) and his wife, Charlotte (Zoe Wanamaker). 3) On the Cover Color Photo: Michael Hordern as the Rev. Simeon Simcox.; [John Mortimer]'S `PARADISE POSTPONED'. On the Cover Color Photo: Michael Hordern as the Rev. Simeon Simcox.

[Kierkegaard] notwithstanding, ''Paradise Postponed'' isn't at all pompous about the self-consciousness of its technique. In fact, the novels-within-the-novel written by the rather dislikeable [Henry Simcox] bear a satiric relation to Mr. [John Mortimer]'s own work. Thus one of Henry's most successful novels viciously mocks Hollywood from the viewpoint of an English screenwriter - just as segments of ''Paradise Postponed'' do. (These Hollywood sections are unfortunately the weakest part of Mr. Mortimer's novel: they come off merely as pale rehashes of Evelyn Waugh and Nathanael West.) A similarly self-conscious use of language informs ''Paradise Postponed.'' [Fred Simcox] and [Simeon Simcox]'s deathbed conversation, for instance, is described as coming ''too late, like something shouted from a train window, after the last awkward and prolonged goodbyes have been said and after, to everyone's relief, the guard has blown his whistle.'' This metaphor sustains itself through their final conversations so that Simeon's last words come as a traveler's parting remarks: '' 'Judgement!' The Rector turned his head to look at his younger son and spoke with a fading urgency. 'I should like you to know that it hasn't been so simple.' And then his voice came from further away, as though the train were already drawing out of the station. 'Not half so straightforward as it might have looked.' '' JUST as he revives the Victorian novel by updating both its subject matter and its techniques to suit the modern setting, Mr. Mortimer animates the old death-as-a-journey metaphor by making it literal. Moreover, the effect of this linguistic playfulness is both serious and moving. Throughout ''Paradise Postponed,'' Mr. Mortimer's wry authorial tone steers delicately between sentiment and satire. In his skillful hands, we seem to be viewing the world from a very great distance - far away enough to make even the tragedies slightly comic - while at the same time we are right inside the characters' heads. And Mr. Mortimer's prose is so easygoing, so companionable, that he appears to accomplish this act of literary ventriloquism without moving his lips. MURDER: MORE DANGEROUS THAN FICTION In 1945, Evelyn Waugh thought Americans wouldn't give a fig for his new novel ''Brideshead Revisited.'' But the archly serious tale of a titled British family between the wars did become a best seller in America - in 1982, after John Mortimer's 11-part television adaptation gained popularity with PBS viewers. ''Waugh once wrote to a friend that no more than eight Americans would like the novel,'' Mr. Mortimer said in a telephone interview from his apartment in London. ''Now Sebastian [ the novel's neurasthenic leading character ] is the subject of look-alike contests in the streets of San Francisco.'' Perhaps considering the ''Brideshead'' phenomenon, Mr. Mortimer has packaged his new novel, ''Paradise Postponed,'' accordingly. He wrote the book and the teleplay at the same time. The 12-part ''Paradise Postponed'' is to appear on British television this fall.

PUBLIC television's ''Masterpiece Theater'' gets a new tenant this Sunday - on Channel 13 at 9 P.M. - bearing the most promising of credentials. ''Paradise Postponed'' was written by John Mortimer, adaptor of ''Brideshead Revisited'' and creator of ''Rumpole of the Bailey.'' It was directed by Alvin Rakoff, who did the same for Mr. Mortimer's autobiographical ''A Voyage Round My Father,'' which starred Sir Laurence Olivier. And the 11 parts of ''Paradise Postponed,'' produced by Jacqueline Davis, are dotted with the kind of splendid acting turns that are a peculiar specialty of the British.

Although Mr. [Alan Schneider] displayed a catholicity of taste over the years -among his early efforts were stagings of such plays as Thornton Wilder's ''Skin of Our Teeth,'' Robert Anderson's ''All Summer Long'' and Clifford Odets's ''Country Girl'' - he would become best known for his more experimental work, and in one of the few passages of self-assessment in this volume he makes it clear where his affinities lay. ''I am the only American theater director who ever went from the avant-garde to the Old Guard without having passed through the Establishment,'' he writes. ''I have always favored the poetic over the prosaic, siding with instinct over reason, swayed by the power of symbols, images, metaphors, all of the substances lurking behind the closed eyelids of the mind. To me, these are more faithful signs of essential truths than all those glossy photographs that seek to mirror our external world. I've always preferred Chekhov to Ibsen, Tennessee Williams to Arthur Miller, and Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy; but [Samuel Beckett]'s metaphors reach deepest into my subconscious self.'' Having been signed up to direct the first American production of ''Waiting for Godot'' in 1955, Mr. Schneider spends a week looking for the elusive writer in Paris and finally succeeds in trying to get Mr. Beckett to answer his questions about the play. ''According to him,'' Mr. Schneider writes, ''Godot had 'no meaning' and 'no symbolism.' There was no 'general point of view involved,' but it was certainly 'not existentialist.' Nothing in it meant anything other than what it was on the surface. 'It's just about two people who are like that.' That was all he would say.''