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Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

WATCHING JEREMY Northam and Sean Hayes re-enact numerous routines from the heyday of the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, viewers likely will have a recurring thought: Boy oh boy, were people a lot more easily amused back then.

``Martin and Lewis,'' a lovingly evoked docudrama by writer/director John Gray of the inexplicable phenomenon that ran a decade, from its tentative sputtering to life in 1946 to its angry 1956 crash-and-burn, easily surmounts the usual trappings of the show-biz biopic. That's because Gray is able to conjure a lot of frisson between Northam (as Martin) and Kate Levering as Dean's second wife, Jeanne, and even some palpable chemistry between Northam and Hayes (as Lewis).

He's undone, a bit, by his decision to re-create what seems like too many of their comedy routines. As Nick Tosches, in his brilliant biography ``Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams,'' puts it, even to a weary, nonchalant Martin, Lewis' shtick was ``playing a 13-year-old palsied monkey and seeing it as (expletive) genius.'' And even that may be a generous assessment.

Martin was a low-rent crooner when he met Lewis, who was only rumored to have talent as a broad comic. Together, the unlikely combination of the handsome, effortlessly offhanded Martin and the adenoidal geek Lewis was so unlikely as to be humorous in and of itself. Martin made his work look not like work at all and Lewis let success go to his head, gobbling up ever more credit for their success; something was bound to give, and when it did, America was genuinely stunned. (We got over it, though.)

Northam (except for maybe one shot) scarcely looks like Martin but gets his voice in dialogue and captures his swinging insouciance. (He's so good in that mode, in fact, that when he's called upon to get angry it seems like way too much.) Hayes (an Emmy winner for his work in ``Will & Grace'') looks like Lewis in a scene or two and captures his inane clowning; however, he doesn't really capture the megalomaniacal impulses that sent Martin scurrying from millions of guaranteed dollars. An optimist might surmise that's because Hayes really is a nice guy who doesn't connect with such a toxic sensibility.

Lewis has said that his and Martin's success was based on their camaraderie, not their material, and so it goes here - Northam and Hayes evince such an unexpected affection for one another that by the film's conclusion, regardless of its other faults, there's a genuine sense of wistfulness.

MARTIN AND LEWIS - Two and one half stars

What: Docudrama about the celebrated comedy duo, starring Jeremy Northam and Sean Hayes.

Where: CBS (Channel 2).

When: 9 tonight.

In a nutshell: The comedy material may not endure, but the story of a troubled friendship does.

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Photo:

Jeremy Northam as Dean Martin, left, and Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis.