BIZARRE ACTING PUTS A LETHAL ARROW THROUGH CBS' 'COMANCHE MOON'.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE

>TV CRITIC

The 1989 production "Lonesome Dove" remains, some 20 years later, one of the high-water marks in TV miniseries history.

For "Comanche Moon," a six-hour prequel debuting tonight on CBS, Simon Wincer, who directed the original, returns, and Larry McMurtry, who wrote the novels, adapted the screenplay with his writing partner Diana Ossana (together, they won an Oscar for their "Brokeback Mountain" script).

Which begs the question: So, what went wrong here?

"Comanche Moon" is tonally muddled something fierce: Serious scenes draw unintended laughs, while ostensibly comic scenes fall flat.

Part of this is due to the performances -- Val Kilmer and Rachel Griffiths are fairly over-the-top, while other actors are earnestly flat-footed.

Though the material seeks to demythologize the Western, Wincer seems to be striving in the other direction, resulting in showdowns that are built up only to be disappointingly anti- climactic.

"Comanche Moon" looks at the middle years of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, who were played memorably by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in "Lonesome Dove," and are here essayed by Steve Zahn and Keith Urban, respectively. They're Texas Rangers in the 1850s, protecting the burgeoning town of Austin from Comanche attacks.

They're led by the eccentric Yankee, Capt. Inish Scull (Kilmer), whose wife, Inez (Griffiths), takes full opportunity of her husband's frequent absences to randily pursue her libidinous desires.

Problem is, the ragtag Rangers never seem to be in the right place at the right time. When the Comanches -- led by Chief Buffalo Hump (Wes Studi) -- attack Austin (the program's most stirring sequence, at the beginning of the second installment), the Rangers are off pursuing a horse thief.

And when they return to witness the devastation, McCrae and Call are quickly dispatched to rescue Scull from a kidnapper rather than rebuild the city and protect it from further attacks. Convenient narrative contrivances turn that mission into a misadventure more comic than heroic.

Episode three plays mainly as a dissonant coda to the first installments; the film doesn't so much end as simply peter out.

Of course, McCrae and Call have women problems, as well, as they're too tentative to commit to the loves of their lives (played by Linda Cardellini and Elizabeth Banks, respectively).

The actresses do decent work, but their chemistry with their male counterparts is wan, at best, undercutting the tragedy of their unrequited romances.

Perhaps "Comanche Moon" is most undone by the way McMurtry and Ossana's dialogue stumbles from their actors' mouths. It's filled with goofy colloquialisms and dimwitted lines that aspire to be epigrammatic but sound more tin-eared than anything.

Woodrow and Gus, constantly bickering best buddies, are defined -- as is the whole production -- by Woodrow's lamentation: "I'd rather listen to hoot-owls hoot than you make up insults."

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail]

COMANCHE MOON - Two stars

>What: Miniseries prequel to "Lonesome Dove," starring Val Kilmer, Steve Zahn and Rachel Griffiths.

>Where: CBS (Channel 2).

>When: 9 tonight, 9 p.m. Monday and Wednesday.

>In a nutshell: Tonally muddled.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Karl Urban, left, Val Kilmer, Rachel Griffiths and Steve Zahn play key characters in the miniseries "Comanche Moon," the prequel to the 1989 TV production "Lonesome Dove."