PBS `ODYSSEY' TAKES DEEP LOOK INTO ALL THINGS LIVING.

Byline: Water Goodman The New York Times

In 1965, Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson won acclaim for a Life magazine picture essay on the development of an embryo into a baby.

His 1983 television documentary, ``Miracle of Life,'' which displayed in even more remarkable detail the earliest incarnations of what would turn out to be a human being, proved an all-time PBS hit. Now, using the same skills and some new techniques, he brings to ``Nova'' the yet more ambitious ``Odyssey of Life.''

Sunday night's opening hour of a fascinating three hours begins and ends with those still-astonishing prebirth pictures: an egg cell joining with sperm in ``the extraordinary dance of life''; the division into specialized cells that begins early and ends only with death; the growth of the fetus until by 19 weeks all its features are clearly defined. (Opponents of abortion have made use of the Nilsson photos to support their argument that the fetus is a human being.)

Now Nilsson, extending his reach, uses microphotography and computer magic to deliver a short tour of evolution. The program's theme is stated and restated: Behind life's diversity is a commonality rooted in the earliest beginnings. Lovely images - the screen sparkles with jewels, planets float serenely by, dreamlike shapes cavort - conjure up billions of years of creation, from gases to the simplest organisms to more sophisticated cells to sea creatures to reptiles to mammals.

This hour, ``The Ultimate Journey,'' is not likely to find much of a welcome among creationists, since it ignores Genesis and keeps emphasizing the similarities among species: ``We are all joined together in a common past.'' Darwin could not have asked for a more talented exponent in the television age.

On Monday the electron microphotography provides a look at ``The Unknown World,'' inhabited or infested by creatures invisible to the unaided eye that keep us constant company. As the song says, you are not alone. There is, for example, the hair follicle mite that makes its home in scalps and on eyelids (it has a taste for mascara); the scavenging dust mite that dines on the flakes of skin that the human body is constantly discarding; the larvae that are fond of wool and fur; the book lice, voracious consumers of literature of all sorts, and of course the billions of bacteria that are constantly doing battle in our bodies. It's enough to make a person scratch.

``Odyssey of Life'' concludes on Tuesday with a look at the looker, an hour in which Nilsson reveals some of the secrets of his trade. All that his work requires, along with custom-made lenses and some ingenious mechanical devices, are a rich imagination and inestimable patience, the conscientiousness of a scientist combined with the temperament of an artist.

While admiring the man who is described here as ``an important messenger between the scientific world and the public,'' you may sympathize with the Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson (no relation), who at first resisted his request to film her vocal cords, saying, ``I happen to know where his little camera has been.'' But don't worry: You get to see them.

THE FACTS

The show: ``Odyssey of Life.''

When: 8 p.m. tonight, Monday and Tuesday.

Where: KCET (Channel 28).