SO, farewell then the BBC. As Private Eye's E.J. Thribb would have said: '''This is the BBC . . . that was your catchphrase'.'' Perhaps more in hope than in charity, the BBC is still sending out its schedules. Here is a quick guide to what you will not be able to see today: Floyd On Food. At 12.25pm gregarious and slightly overweight gastronaut Keith Floyd will not be visiting a Royal Navy field kitchen and will not be cooking fish and chips in a local English fish and chip shop. Holiday. At 6.05pm former gymnast Jill Dando will not be attending the ultimate party - the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Kathy Taylor will not be going to Sardinia and the Lacey family from Liverpool will not be testing three of Britain's top theme parks. Horizon. At 12.05am this excellent medical documentary series will not be smashing the sterotypical image of the scientist as a train-spotting, spectacle-wearing boffin. The programme will also not be looking at nine months in the life of young scientists at Manchester University. The good news for ''Utterly Disgusted'' of Discovery Bay and ''Appalled'' of Shouson Hill is that the BBC World Service might re-appear in Hong Kong on Wharf Cable's International Channel. Wharf managing director Stephen Ng has made the BBC an offer and is hopeful it will accept. No date has been set but we might get the Beeb back in our living rooms as soon as May, albeit not initially for 24 hours a day. In the meantime, if you want decent news programmes, move to India. HERE is a clue for those of you trying to work out whether or not Wild Palms (Pearl, 9.30pm) makes sense. The rhino dreams are the central thing. There are only two of them in the series, but they are central to everything. Wild Palms' creator Bruce Wagner said that and if anyone knows what the show is about it should be him. The following might also help you get to the bottom of it. When Harry Wyckoff (James Belushi) enters a particularly foreboding building he says ''I'll be your Virgil'', an allusion to Dante's Inferno. When they cut the stained-glass birthday cake the senator and his clique recite a toast in unison. The toast is taken from the opening stanza of Of Mere Being, one of the last poems written by Wallace Stevens, who died in 1955. William Butler Yeats is another poet well-represented in the series. Two of the characters trade lines from his poem The Wind Is Old And Still At Play. Senator Kreutzer (Robert Loggia) often paraphrases the Greek comic playwright Aristophanes. Clear? For all its obscure excesses and obtuse dialogue, Wild Palms is about something. It is about television and the apocalypse it is bringing. In a world full of virtual reality who needs a soul? Who needs a brain? Have you watched MTV lately? PRODUCER David Kelley's Picket Fences (Pearl, 12.45am) is a chip off the same block. Less obscure, less hamstrung, but often just as peculiar. Fences is set in the little (fictional) town of Rome, Wisconsin, where law is enforced by Sheriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerrit) and medicine is practised by his wife, the town doctor Jill Brock (Kathy Baker). They are a caring couple, who value the influence of small-town life on their three children. But quaint family dramas died with grandma Walton. So Kelley turned Fences into a nightmare. The Tin Man in the town's production of the Wizard of Oz drops dead from poisoning and a housewife tries to end it all by setting the timer on her dishwasher, crawling inside and shutting the door. CONVENTIONAL entertainment is provided by The Land That Time Forgot (World, 9.30pm), in which Doug McClure competes for attention with some cheesy special effects. This is an almost prehistoric British production (1975) of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs children's adventure book. The Murders In The Rue Morgue (STAR Plus, 12 midnight and 3.30am) is based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of grisly murders in foggy Paris and features a top-notch cast including Rebecca DeMornay and George C. Scott. SALLY Round and her Inside Story team are taking a two-week rest to prepare their new-look programme, more of which some other time. In its place this evening is Taming Of The Yangtze (World, 8.30pm), a Hong Kong documentary about the great river and China's attempts to control it.
