THEIR `SHINING' MOMENT ACTORS LINE UP FOR STEPHEN KING MINISERIES.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

A tale of two actresses: Kim Delaney, who calls ``The Shawshank Redemption'' and ``Stand by Me'' her favorite films based on Stephen King stories, says, ``My youngest brother never gets excited about anything I do, but when I gave him a book signed by Stephen King, he was, `Omigod!'''

Contrast this with Claire Forlani, who avoids horror fiction like the plague. ``I've seen one horror movie,'' she confesses. ```The Shining.' It's brilliant, and it stopped me from watching a horror film ever again.''

What the actresses have in common is they play characters imperiled during fateful vacations in installments of TNT's anthology miniseries, ``Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King.''

The anthology series, beginning tonight, is airing two one-hour episodes each Wednesday over four weeks.

And you might not guess that Forlani ends up starring in one of the creepier ones, ``Crouch End,'' the second of two installments airing tonight. She plays Doris, a newlywed whose honeymoon in England takes an unexpected and even more unwanted turn when her husband (Eion Bailey) is invited to a business dinner in the London suburb that provides the episode's title.

``It's an ugly name,'' she sniffs, yet the place itself proves even uglier -- and soon they're running for their lives.

Delaney stars in the devilishly cheeky ``You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,'' the series' final installment on Aug. 2, as Mary. Her marriage is nowhere near as blissful, and when she and her husband (Steven Weber) gets hopelessly lost on a road trip through Oregon, they stumble upon a town populated by dead -- and only slightly sinister -- rock 'n' roll icons.

``It's bright, it's sunny, and then they had the maggots,'' Delaney says with a laugh while recalling shooting a scene in which a meal at a diner goes horribly awry when Janis Joplin (Erin Wright) gets a face full of the wriggling rice impersonators. ``Maggots. For most of it, they used rice, but they also used what they called `clinical maggots.' I don't care if they're clean! I don't care -- they're still maggots!''

``Hell of a Band'' was the first installment shot of the series, all of which was produced in Melbourne, Australia. ``I liked that it wasn't strictly horror,'' Delaney says. ``The characters and their dilemma was interesting. You have a married couple -- she'd prefer to be pampered in a Four Seasons; he wants to be on the road. It's layered. Is she asleep; is this a dream-turns-into-nightmare?

``Is it really happening, or are they simply trapped in their marriage, dying a little bit at a time?'' she continues. ``I liked the commentary on all this. -- I like the complicated, raw characters that are flawed.''

For her part, Forlani had issued an edict to her manager -- don't even think about sending a horror script her way.

``The idea of doing that for three months -- life's too short,'' she says, sighing.

Nonetheless, her manager sent her ``Crouch End.'' ``She said, `You should really read this; I think you're going to like it. It just sounds really cool, and I think you're going to dig it.' And I told her, `You know, I can't read this stuff. I've tried a million times -- I get to Page 2, and I'm like, `You've lost your mind!' But it was one of those fun moments where you have fun reading something. I thought, `I could do this.'

``I just loved that it was this couple on this honeymoon, in this blissful, giddy state,'' Forlani continues. ``They're having this great time and then, through the law of romantic- ness, they're called to this business dinner. When they get down there, the instinct is to turn around, but that seems so crazy. And the instinct's right.

``This all happens in a day -- I loved that you see them at the start, and then you see (my character) at the end. To me, it kind of connects.''

And it also suggested to the actress that horror isn't such a distasteful genre after all. ``Yeah, that was one of the very cool things about it, that it opened up this door for me,'' she says. It was a very cool experience; I would do this again. I managed now to read my first horror script -- a Stephen King one, actually.''

`Nightmares & Dreamscapes'' is produced by Bill Haber, who's more accustomed to working on Broadway than for TV (previous efforts include the miniseries ``Jack and the Beanstalk: The True Story'' and ``Uprising''). But he boasts a special affinity for the material: He's known King for 35 years and even represented the author for a while.

``This (miniseries) makes me feel good -- I didn't screw him over this time,'' Haber says with a laugh.

Nor would he want to. By Haber's estimation, King has ``the most adventuresome, unexpected mind of any living writer today. He's utterly unpredictable.''

And Haber insists, ``We're not doing a horror series. Half of them are not horror. `The Fifth Quarter' (which airs July 26, starring Jeremy Sisto and Samantha Mathis) is a remarkably touching story about a man in prison and his relationship with his wife, presented in a unique way only King could've imagined.

```The End of the Whole Mess' (which airs July 19, starring Ron Livingston and Henry Thomas, about a man whose efforts to end evil in the world are ironically disastrous) is a comment about contemporary society.

```Autopsy Room Four' (which airs Aug. 2, starring Richard Thomas as a man who is literally snakebitten) is a comedy. In `Battleground,' there is not one single word of dialogue. The challenge was to find stories that will look good visually, to stay interesting.''

Others appearing in the miniseries include such Oscar-winning or -nominated stars as William Hurt, William H. Macy, Tom Berenger and Marsha Mason. ``What always attracts actors -- unless they're broke and need the money -- is the word,'' Haber insists. ``If you start with Stephen King, who has remarkable words, and give them to talented scriptwriters, then you're OK. If it's not a good script, it's not going to work no matter who you get to be in it.''

Even fear-fearing Forlani has become a convert to King, who received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 -- not bad for a guy once dismissed as the ``King of Horror.''

``I'm now only discovering it, but I can't believe the array, the volume of different stories this guy has,'' Forlani says. ``Most authors, even the best ones, they have a genre that they write; it's the same kind of story again and again and again. To actually have people that do things that are completely different ... Stephen King is one of the rarest, that actually has this totally different way of writing each story. It's so unique.''

``Where do his ideas come from? Nobody can answer that,'' Haber says. ``I've jokingly said to him, I don't think he was born on this earth, I don't think he's a human being. He doesn't dispute it.''

David Kronke, [phone]

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NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES: FROM THE STORIES OF STEPHEN KING

What: Anthology miniseries based on the author's short stories.

Where: TNT.

When: 9 and 10 tonight, repeating 11 p.m. and midnight Thursday; through Aug. 3.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Horror struck

Big-name actors drawn to Stephen King miniseries

(2) William H. Macy stars in ``Umbrey's Last Case,'' the July 19 episode of ``Nightmares & Dreamscapes.''

(3) In ``You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,'' the final episode Aug. 2 of ``Nightmares & Dreamscapes,'' Kim Delaney and Steven Weber are lost in an Oregon town full of dead rock 'n' roll icons.

(4) Eion Bailey and Claire Forlani's honeymoon in England goes awry when he's invited to a business dinner in ``Crouch End,'' airing tonight.