GOD SAVE THE HISTORY CHANNEL.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

SIMON SCHAMA is definitely a guy you'd want attending your dinner party. He's smart, he's talkative and best of all, he's droll, even when making a point much of Earth might consider arid. And, perhaps most important in Los Angeles, he actually looks indisputably good on camera portraying the stuffy role of ``British historian.''

Schama's ``A History of Britain'' has been appearing intermittently on the History Channel for a couple of years now. Schama's a modern-day shaman, transforming what may seem bone-dry and dull into material that's vibrant, alive, funny, demented and jaw-dropping. The series wraps up tonight and Tuesday, examining the period just after American independence to (almost) modern times.

Schama's documentary has long been a simple, eminently gratifying example of the virtues of old-fashioned intelligent storytelling. Many of the historical figures Schama discusses here aren't quite as eccentric or blood-thirsty as many he has dealt with in previous episodes, but he nonetheless continues to dig out and accentuate the eccentric details - the oddball reason Thomas Paine was spared the guillotine, why a statue of Queen Victoria went missing. These episodes also tend to explore more assiduously the works and philosophies of artists and poets of the age - though it's only wishful thinking that they contributed considerably to the culture of their times.

Tonight's first episode explores the roots of modern thought - soulfulness and the first vestiges of political correctness - while the second examines the Victorian era. Tomorrow night, the awful tolls of Imperialism are put beneath a magnifying glass.

Then, England's two most significant Winstons - Churchill and George Orwell's character Winston Smith - are compared and contrasted. ``Look at Churchill, look at Orwell, and you'll understand what happened to Britain in the 20th century,'' Schama asserts. And while that's obviously balderdash, it's the first time in many centuries that Schama got too glib - and even then, he still manages to imbue the soft-sell sheen of history with insight.

A HISTORY OF BRITAIN - Three stars

What: The concluding four episodes of Simon Schama's documentary epic.

Where: History Channel.

When: 9 tonight and Tuesday.

In a nutshell: Schama remains a wry, engaging storyteller.