'ROBOCOP' GOES ONLINE AGAIN IN SCI-FI MINISERIES.

Byline: - David Kronke

After his gruesomely clever 1987 eponymously titled movie, ``RoboCop'' quickly became a Hollywood hack. Two lousy sequels came in depressingly rapid succession, followed by the last refuge of entertainment scoundrels - an hour-long syndicated series - and even, gasp!, a cartoon show. You'd half expect old RoboCop to be sitting center square on ``Hollywood Squares.''

Now, the half-man/half-cyborg/all-mean character seeks redemption in ``RoboCop: Prime Directives,'' an eight-hour miniseries running at 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday on the Sci-Fi Channel. It takes place a decade after RoboCop (played here by Page Fletcher) first went online, with Delta City more anarchic than ever despite the sinister megaconglomerate OCP's propagandistic campaign to put a happy face on the mounting body count. (The clever touches - an interactive news show in which viewers can buy action figures of the terrorists who make the headlines - are a carry-over from the original film.)

Sundry OCP executives scheme to rule the city by themselves; turbo- charged villains blow up everything in sight; Delta City's last honest cop (Maurice Dean Wint) is transformed into RoboCop's evil twin and other apocalyptic mayhem transpires. Plotting is cynical, a tad on the mean- spirited side and not always terribly logical, while the obscure Canadian actors and portentous synthesizer music give this all the panache of a - or, rather, four - direct-to-video movies.

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Photo:

Maurice Dean Wint, left, and Page Fletcher appear as dueling cyborgs in the new ``RoboCop'' miniseries.