WARMED-OVER COOK HISTORY CHANNEL'S NEW REALITY SHOW PRESENTS THE USUAL SHIP OF FOOLS.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

HISTORY CHANNEL'S oddball reality hybrid is titled ``The Ship,'' but it really should be called ``The Usual Assortment of Reality-TV Wanna-bes Offering Typically Insipid Observations.''

Ostensibly, filmmaker Chris Terrill's six-hour miniseries aspires to several goals. First, it wants to re-create James Cook's historic 1771 journey in which he came upon both New Zealand and Australia, depicting the hardships an average shipman experienced. It tries to celebrate the ingenious design of Cook's ship, the Endeavour, depicting, on an exact replica, the optimal use of every square inch. And, of course, ``The Ship'' is really about the people: With 15 ``professionals'' and 40 ``volunteers,'' it seeks to amp up the human drama as disparate folks interact in cramped quarters lacking 21st-century comforts for a six-week tour.

Basically, it's an uneasy alliance, if you will, of ``Survivor,'' the BBC's ``Castaway'' and PBS' ``Frontier House.'' And this show comes with its indulgent DVD commentary tracks already included. In tonight's episode, particularly, there's a lot of uninteresting palaver from the Americans who explain how they got on the show, jabbering about production challenges, and Terrill saying, ``I think people will get all sorts of things out of this series.'' Don't talk about it, just do it.

Coincidentally, Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Horwitz does the same thing - and more - in the new book ``Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.'' Horwitz replicates portions of three Cook explorations, including a version of the one re-created in ``The Ship,'' also on an Endeavour replica. Horwitz manages both better history and better drama from his perambulations than does ``The Ship.''

Here, there are wan attempts to wring drama out of everything, from a mild protest by aboriginals decrying how Cook's legacy steamrollered their culture to laundry etiquette to the lousy food. ``Here it goes, it's starting to sizzle!'' exclaims the cook, and the camera jerks down for a look in the pot - sure enough, there are some veggies. The best line goes to the narrator: ``The goat is sick, and so is Vanessa.''

When word of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 reach our intrepid sailors, the wind is literally taken out of their sails - the point of this adventure has both been breached and revealed as trivial and inconsequential. It's a little late in the game for documentarians to be deriving drama from reactions to Sept. 11, particularly from folks who were utterly removed from it. As one admits, ``And then, after a while, we went (back) to our little own false reality.''

At series' conclusion, the participants negotiate normal life with a new-found difficulty. At the end of Horwitz's book, the author's friend says he finally realizes why Cook embarked on so many journeys: ``Cook traveled because he liked to run away. It solved all life's problems.'' Not until their respective denouements do ``The Ship'' and ``Blue Latitudes'' find a philosophical common ground.

THE SHIP - Two stars

What: History of James Cook's discovery of Australia, sort of, re-enacted by reality-TV participants.

Where: History Channel.

When: 9 tonight, through Wednesday.

In a nutshell: Slips between bar stools - it's not much as either historical document or reality-TV drama.

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More than 50 people sailed for six weeks on a replica of James Cook's Endeavour, tracing the British explorer's 1771 route to New Zealand and Australia, on ``The Ship.''