SOLID ACTING LIFTS 'AVALON' ABOVE THE MISTS.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

At its core, ``The Mists of Avalon'' has a pretty interesting idea - exploring Arthurian legend from the point of view of the female characters, juxtaposing the earthly (read: male) and spiritual (feminine) elements of the mythology of Camelot. And with Julianna Margulies, Anjelica Huston, Joan Allen, Caroline Goodall and Samantha Mathis, the TNT miniseries debuting tonight has actresses with precisely the right blend of ethereal qualities and strength of essence. Michael Vartan, too, boasts plenty of charisma as Sir Lancelot.

But the director is Uli Edel, who, as the guy in charge of ``Body of Evidence,'' one of Madonna's schlockier vehicles (and that's saying something) and the gleeful wallow in sleaze ``Last Exit to Brooklyn,'' betrays an impulse toward histrionic melodrama. And so, there are a handful of scenes here that really wrench you from the proceedings with their ham-fistedness - you might think you've wandered onto ``Xena: The Pretentious Years'' or Lilith Fair's incarnation of a medieval-village tourist trap.

A couple of klutzy moments, unfortunately, occur early on. There's a scene as the film opens in which Viviane (Huston), the mystical High Priestess of Avalon, and her sisters Igraine (Goodall) and Morgause (Allen) bicker over who gets to marry who and who gets to give birth to which king, which plays a little like the Monty Python sketch in which starving sailors stranded at sea argue over which of them will have the honor of being eaten by the others.

It's followed, in rapid succession, by perhaps the least subtle exchange of furtive glances in miniseries history, between Igraine and her future husband, Uther Pendragon (Mark Lewis Jones), who will father Arthur.

Things settle down for a while, as young Morgaine (who grows up to be played by Margulies) and her halrother, the crazily coiffed Arthur (whose mane settles down once he's played by Edward Atterton), frolic and are separated. Morgaine learns the mystical arts from Viviane, while Arthur pursues his destiny to become king.

Soap-opera-style plot-description alert: Arthur also hooks up with a watery Gwenhwyfar (that's Guinevere to you and me, and played by Mathis), who stiffs Morgaine by forcing her to marry the father of the man she truly loves (of course, both she and Guinevere have a thing for Lancelot, but that's yet another story). Of course, Morgaine, during a pagan ritual involving goofy and utterly unerotic masks, still somehow manages to become pregnant with her sinister spawn Mordred - and, oops! The father is her halrother, who, unaware of Mordred's lineage and unable to have a child with Guinevere, drunkenly invites Lancelot into their marriage bed. Whew. Surprisingly, this saucy gambit doesn't work, either, though director Edel probably got to work out some issues shooting this scene that he didn't resolve while making ``Body of Evidence.''

Meanwhile, don't count out Morgause, who, were she alive today, would be the woman in a corporation who betrays all womanhood by getting ahead through sex and slander; she raises Mordred (he being the medieval version of a latchkey kid and Morgaine the Arthurian equivalent of a working mom) to be evil, just like her.

Many vile machinations and insidious plots propel the story, based on Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel, yet the myriad internecine subplots never seem too overly complicated or convoluted. The film places the era in an intriguing context of conflicting religions that most Arthurian epics neglect. And lest the story seem too much of a sisters-doing-it-for-themselves-type thing, it should be noted that the women inadvertently bring about one another's undoing; as Margulies rather blankly intones near the film's end, ``Both Camelot and Avalon disappear into the mists.''

``The Mists of Avalon'' offers a number of talented actresses a sprawling forum in which to work, and the production boasts impressive technical work in the cinematography (credit to Vilmos Zsigmond), design (Rodger Maus and Carlo R. Poggioli) and musical score (Lee Holdridge) areas. It's alternately a little too goofy and selmportant around the edges, but in the end, it's a rousing yarn.

``THE MISTS OF AVALON''

What: The Arthurian legend from the women's point of view informs this miniseries.

The stars: Julianna Margulies, Joan Allen, Anjelica Huston, Caroline Goodall, Edward Atterton, Michael Vartan, Samantha Mathis.

Where: TNT.

When: Part 1: 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight tonight. Part 2: 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight Monday. In its entirety: Friday, Saturday and July 30.

Our rating: Three stars

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Samantha Mathis and Edward Atterton in a scene from the Arthurian tale ``The Mysts of Avalon,'' on TNT.