HOLLYWOOD TRUE TO HISTORY MORE OFTEN THAN NOT.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

In 1988, George MacDonald Fraser's ``The Hollywood History of the World'' offered a fascinatingly contrarian, almost heretical, view of movies: Mainly, that filmmakers got a lot more right than they got wrong in their historical epics. People whose history lessons came from the multiplex, he suggested, weren't as egregiously misinformed as most scholars would insist.

The History Channel's new mini-series documentary, ``History Vs. Hollywood,'' seconds that notion. In four one-hour episodes running tonight through Thursday, ``History Vs. Hollywood'' demonstrates that filmmakers were more assiduous with the facts than they're usually given credit for, even in cases where they clearly weren't even trying.

Tonight's premise is that although ``M*A*S*H'' was intended, by director Robert Altman's admission, to be more about Vietnam than the Korean War (a scene that takes place in Seoul finds many extras darting about in hats that are explicitly Vietnamese), it nailed many of the particulars of life in the mobile hospital units. And though screenwriter William Goldman was just trying to write a lark of a romantic action comedy with ``Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'' a speculative scene he envisioned, in which Sundance's girlfriend aided them in a robbery, turns out to be quite likely accurate.

``Patton'' embellished moments here and there, but even the general's grandson concedes the film was true to his spirit in all its squirrelly detail. And ``The French Connection'' was more than a semi-faithful depiction of the country's then-largest drug bust (with a few cinematic flourishes thrown in for good measure, like the legendary car chase and the explosive finale), it also further spurred America's war on drugs. (Which makes one wonder what the much-lauded verisimilitude of the more pessimistic ``Traffic'' will do for said war in the future.)

Narrated by Burt Reynolds and executive-produced by Kevin Burns, ``History Vs. Hollywood'' is eminently watchable as it puts these films both in the context of history and the context of the time in which they were made. For example, at the height of the Vietnam controversy, the character of ``Patton'' was sold as something of a ``rebel;'' the film connected with both hawks and doves. Interviewees do a good job of delineating the films' historical verities and where they stray, often fancifully, from reality.

The series' one drawback is its questionable agenda - it discusses only 20th Century Fox productions; the company responsible for the show is a Fox imprimatur, so clearly, they're interested at least nominally in touting back-catalogue product. (Many of the "M*A*S*H" interviews were recycled from an American Movie Classics program on the film.) But if synergy was always as done as artfully as it is, say, on ``The French Connection'' episode, as it deconstructs the actual case's labyrinthine twists, that word might not be as dirty a word as it is, artistically speaking, these days.

Still, the ambitions of this series have yet to be meant. There are scores of films that have come under fire for fudging the facts; this program has a wealth of fascinating (non-Fox) movies it could just as easily examine in the future. Having conspiracy theorists and government mouthpieces alike arguing the merits of Oliver Stone's ``JFK'' and ``Nixon,'' for example, would make for a couple of priceless episodes.

``HISTORY VS. HOLLYWOOD''

What: Documentary miniseries charting the historical veracity of Hollywood films.

Where: History Channel.

When: 9 p.m. tonight through Thursday.

Our rating: Three stars