THE REAL `TRAGEDY' IS THAT THIS STORY IS BEING TOLD AGAIN.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Network miniseries this weekend range from the sacred (NBC's ``In the Beginning'') to the profane (CBS' ``American Tragedy'') and, as usual, the networks find more inspiration in the profane.

Director-producer Lawrence Schiller directs this take on the sordid O.J. Simpson saga from a verbose, exposition-heavy script by, of all folks, Norman Mailer, who adapts Schiller's 1996 book on the trial. Thanks to Simpson buddy Robert Kardashian, who winnowed Schiller into the pricey ``Dream Team's'' strategy sessions, Schiller's film's perspective comes wholly from the defense team. Ironically, Simpson - who can still find attorneys willing to work with him - sued, unsuccessfully, to keep this production off the air. Maybe the public's opinion of him would go up if he tried to sue to keep real junk off the air, like ``Normal, Ohio'' or ``The Michael Richards Show.''

Robert Shapiro is played by Ron Silver, who sports a couple of caterpillars over his eyebrows and walks stiffly through the proceedings, as if he's always holding in his stomach. Ving Rhames, a commanding actor who seems to be coasting here on some casual charisma, essays Johnny Cochran. Bruno Kirby kind of gets lost in the crowd as Barry Scheck - his characterization seems limited to his hair's goofy bangs, while Christopher Plummer turns in yet another of his reliably strong turns, giving an uncanny impersonation of the blustery F. Lee Bailey (he sputters and self-aggrandizes himself to such an extent you're almost reminded of Burgess Meredith's take on the Penguin on the old ``Batman'' TV series).

Schiller largely dispenses with color. There are but a couple of scenes - two colleagues mock Cochran and Shapiro's propensity for oneupsmanship in the name-dropping department; Cochran jokes that O.J. should take a black woman for a girlfriend when he gets out of jail - that are both amusing and instructive of what occurred behind the scenes. Largely, though, this is a defense team procedural, pure and simple, walking viewers through the strategy sessions in posh offices and posher restaurants, giving us an idea of the passion, cynicism and - maybe most of all - clamorous clashing of egos that fueled Cochran and company as they prepared Simpson's ever-amorphous defense.

Purely through exchanged glances, Schiller hints that other attorneys, for example, eventually got pretty tired of Bailey's swagger. (Interestingly, Schiller chooses to show Simpson only via archival video or in shadows or from behind - though he chatters endlessly from speakerphones, providing reams of exposition - rendering him ephemeral and even mythological in a bizarre, unintended fashion.)

The end result, alas, is a fairly limited viewpoint regarding everything else that surrounded the Simpson phenomenon. The prosecution team is allowed merely to doodle in the margins, so that the preponderance of evidence suggesting guilt is never persuasively addressed. (Attention to them is so lacking that at one point in the proceedings, Marcia Clark - Diana LaMar - reverts back to her frizzy hairdo after being seen with her revised, smoother styling.) At one point, Scheck badgers Clark in a bullying way while in Judge Ito's (look-alike Clyde Kusatsu) chambers, suggesting the depths of contempt each side had for the other, but the intense mind games between the two combatant teams is never really explored other than in a thin, synthetic fashion.

Nor does Schiller really get a grasp of what a media circus the whole mess devolved into - he may have been too ``inside'' to understand that outlook. Hence, ``American Tragedy'' plays with a leaden seriousness, with little irony over how thoroughly America became obsessed with a football player/bad movie actor's travails. (Schiller's also awfully sloppy about keeping track of his time frames: Bars are shown filled, midmorning, with drinking patrons taking in the spectacle of the trial, while others view events taking place in the evening with sunlight pouring through their windows.) And when Schiller begins to expound on the scientific evidence, eyes across America will likely glaze over anew, just as they did during that epic stretch of drudgery in the real trial.

But ``American Tragedy'' does make an honest attempt to explore the racial divisiveness that roiled through the trial, and Schiller does effectively re-create the trial and the mood of tense tedium that befell downtown L.A.'s courthouse. (Somewhat dubiously, he uses archival footage of many of the trial's players, such as Fred Goldman and Mark Fuhrman, which, one supposes, saved him a little money when it came to not having to hire actors.) For those riveted to the trial the first time around, it's an adrenaline jolt of nostalgia evoking a time when everyone had an opinion on the matter and everyone seemed a little crazy.

``AMERICAN TRAGEDY''

What: Again with the O.J. trial!

The stars: Ving Rhames, Ron Silver, Christopher Plummer, Bruno Kirby.

Where: KCBS (Channel 2).

When: 9 tonight and Wednesday night.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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Photo:

Bruno Kirby, left, Ron Silver, Ving Rhames and Christopher Plummer star in ``American Tragedy.''