'GRAPEVINE' JUICY BUT TANGLED.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

If ''Grapevine'' seems a little familiar, you've been watching way too much TV - it previously served as a summer replacement series in 1992 about Miami singles grasping blindly for affection in the bright Florida sun.

Back then, characters weren't expected to chat directly with the home viewer - only ``It's Garry Shandling's Show'' had tried it, briefly, on Fox a few years earlier - and tales of young, white, self-possessed urbanites searching desperately for love (or, at least, sex) hadn't yet insufferably clogged the airwaves. Of the show, ``The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows'' could only shrug, ``It was all very disjointed and soon left the air.''

The more things change, the more they stay the same. ``Grapevine'' is back, its concept more or less intact. But these days you can't go channel-surfing for more than a couple of minutes without stumbling over young, self-absorbed, white urbanites yakking to the camera about their miserable love lives. Where ``Grapevine'' was ahead of its time eight years ago, in 2000 it comes a season or two too late.

Susan (Kristy Swanson, Buffy in the failed cinematic incarnation of ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'') works for a cruise-line company and is an inveterate matchmaker. David (Steven Eckholdt, who was recently in ``It's Like, You Know'' and here gets promoted from sidekick in the original ``Grapevine'' to leading man) left the legal profession to run a restaurant. His brother Thumper (Eckholdt's original role, now essayed by George Eads) is an unrepenting superficial stud, whose relationships scarcely last as long as his sportscasts on local TV.

Since Susan likes to meddle in other people's and couple's affairs, it's a good thing she, David and Thumper have so many pals whose lives are in need of ruining. And Susan and David have long shared an unspoken, unrequited love since their days in school, which will be dwelt upon endlessly here, as well. And since they routinely jabber directly to the camera, you can reasonably assume you're going to get far more information about these folks than you want or need.

What distinguishes ``Grapevine'' isn't its conceit or its conceited, self-absorbed characters. It's its music-video style of breakneck editing and use of multiple film stocks to tell its stories - think Oliver Stone, reconfigured as an incurable romantic instead of a thrill-seeking misogynist.

In tonight's premiere, I counted no fewer than 533 different edits, or a cut every 2 1/2 seconds. Contrast this to a recent episode of ``Everybody Loves Raymond,'' which was edited together at a leisurely shot every 10 seconds. This accelerates everything - after silently mooning over one another for years, David and Susan hook up in tonight's episode, consider moving in together next week, and flirt with getting engaged in the following episode.

So, naturally, ``Grapevine'' moves, its blithe wit burbling along on the surface; it's over so fast you hardly have time to reach an opinion on the show. This doesn't, on the other hand, give you much of a chance to get to know or care about the characters. This may be a good thing, since some of them love to luxuriate in their superficiality. But few people come back week after week to admire an editor's flashy handiwork, and they do return to spend time with characters they enjoy.

Madman, murderer, martyr

The Abolitionist John Brown towers, portentously, over Civil War history. Though he was dead - hanged as a self-styled martyr - nearly 18 months before the North and South clashed, his fiery, righteous and self-righteous antics, driven by his own sense of personal apocalypse, precipitated the war, driving a cataclysmic wedge between slave-owners and the progressive Northerners.

Brown inspired songs in his day and a recent epic novel by Russell Banks, ``Cloudsplitter,'' which fairly buzzes with Old Testament-style wrath, builds toward a fearsome, inexorable climax and was short-listed for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Tonight, the PBS series ``The American Experience'' examines ``John Brown's Holy War,'' which poses the question, what is to be done when a man is squarely on the side of right - but may be utterly mad?

Tonight's documentary capably charts how Brown's tireless drive led both to financial devastation and the point at which he had nothing to lose, which made him dangerous if not outright unhinged. ``Let them hang me,'' he defiantly wrote; ``I am worth inconceivably more hanged than for any other purpose.''

At age 17, he opened a tannery in a small town - in direct competition with his father. It was the last time his chutzpah paid off; he lost incredible amounts of money in land grabs and schemes to sell goods overseas - and having 20 children with two different wives causes no end of financial burden, as well.

But Brown was also a religious man of the fire-and-brimstone sort, a Calvinist who believed this life was for suffering; the only difference was his reading of the Bible was far clearer than those who used it to justify slavery.

His witnessing, at the age of 12, of a savage beating of a slave ingrained within him a righteous fire to correct the inequities of indentured servitude, yet he rode his own sons to honor and revere him with a stunning ferocity.

Once Brown devoted his life to ending slavery, it was with a fanaticism that bordered on the messianic; when he went a-massacring, the results were grisly indeed. Even Frederick Douglas, for good reason the most impassioned of abolitionists, was awed, if not frightened, by Brown's zeal. ``I could live for the slave,'' Douglas later wrote, ``but he died for him.''

Brown's Waterloo was, infamously, at Harpers Ferry, Va. He tried to take an armory, and then the entire city, with a handful of men. Even Abraham Lincoln condemned his acts mildly; his execution was private, but one who sneaked in to witness it was an actor named John Wilkes Booth.

Though it tries, ``John Brown's Holy War'' doesn't quite make sense of what drove this most driven of men, but it nonetheless offers a compelling encapsulation of his awful yet oddly inspiring spirit.

The facts

--The show: ``Grapevine.''

--What: Sitcom about lovesick Miami singles.

--Who: Kristy Swanson, Steven Eckholdt.

--Where: CBS (Channel 2).

--When: Premieres 9:30 tonight; regularly scheduled 8:30 p.m. Mondays.

--Our rating: Two stars.

--The show: ``John Brown's Holy War.''

--What: ``The American Experience'' documentary on the controversial abolitionist's tactics leading up to the Civil War.

--Where: KCET.

--When: 9 tonight.

--Our rating: Three stars.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Kristy Swanson portrays a meddling matchmaker in CBS' new series, `Grapevine.'

(2) ``John Brown's Holy War,'' on KCET, explores the life of the man who sparked a crusade to end slavery through the Civil War.