OH, BROTHER MINISERIES EDGY BUT DISJOINTED.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

The more Showtime strives to be golden-era HBO, the more it lands where HBO finds itself today, offering series that are more provocations than truly inspired programming.

``Brotherhood,'' Showtime's latest miniseries, boasts grand ambition and more than a few excellent performances but ultimately squanders its best moments and concludes as a melodramatic hodgepodge.

``Brotherhood'' aspires to the greatness of ``The Sopranos'' and ``The Wire,'' particularly echoing the latter's second season. It concerns two Irish brothers who aren't nearly as different as they consider themselves: Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke), a rising Rhode Island politico, and prodigal son Michael (Jason Isaacs), a thug who returns to ``The Hill,'' the Caffee family's neighborhood, after a seven-year disappearance following a grisly murder.

Tommy, employs some of the same muscle in his political dealings as Michael does in his criminal ventures -- he even finds time to play politics during a memorial service -- but many of his colleagues are equally venomous. ``I'm beholden to no one,'' he declares when, in fact, he's beholden to virtually everyone. His seemingly model wife Eileen (Annabeth Gish) spends long afternoons having sex and smoking pot with a grungy mailman at a cheap motel.

Michael, on the other hand, is a bizarre mixture of hothead and cool customer -- he'll start a brawl after the first play of a softball game, yet controls his temper through tricky criminal negotiations. He manages to elude the law despite a number of fairly public murders, yet, oddly enough, probably performs more noble deeds than anyone else in the sprawling cast over the series' 11 hours.

No wonder their floozy of a mother (Fionnula Flanagan) openly favors Michael, though everyone seems oblivious to the threat his return represents to Tommy's political ambitions. (The other women in Michael's life are stereotypically brazenly promiscuous harridans. And yet, most of the episodes' titles are Bible verses.)

``Brotherhood'' wanders from political deal to political deal (land grabs, arts centers), from crime to crime (turf-war murders, crime-lord murders) and from domestic crisis to domestic crisis (hysterectomy, lost cat) without really gaining any narrative momentum. Tonight's opening minutes promise edgy, hard-hitting material -- we enter ``Brotherhood's'' world with male nudity, a sociopath yanking an earring from a young woman's ear and threatening her with rape, and a racially motivated murder. But oddly enough, the story isn't tautly constructed; it meanders, and by episode six, where plot contrivances finally get the best of it, it seems as though it has lost its route to its inexorable conclusion.

Though ``Brotherhood's'' creative team boasts credits ranging from ``Clear and Present Danger'' to ``Homicide: Life on the Street'' (and -- gulp -- ``Mighty Ducks 3''), they can't rein in their unwieldy story lines.

Characters change drastically from episode to episode or simply disappear; plot lines hinted at never materialize. In the first episode, one character is celebrated for his huge male member; in the finale, he's taunted for its diminutive nature.

Perhaps rather than another inconsistency, it's a metaphor for the series itself, a concept promising a grandiose examination of political and family ties devolved into a puny soap opera.

BROTHERHOOD - Two and one half stars

What: Two brothers -- one a politician, one a thug -- clash over the soul of their Rhode Island neighborhood.

Where: Showtime.

When: 10 and 11 tonight; 9 p.m. Monday, 11 p.m. Tuesday, 10 p.m. Wednesday.

In a nutshell: Many excellent performances in the service of melodramatic storytelling.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke), right, employs the same tactics in his political dealings as his thug brother Michael (Jason Isaacs) does in more dubious enterprises.