Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM

Here comes the O.J. miniseries

Oh sure, to you they were just lawyers arguing a murder case in a claustrophobic, wood-paneled courtroom. But to Norman Mailer and TV producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, the attorneys in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial were storybook characters in a gripping national narrative. And they had personal lives too!

The casting call has gone out for "An American Tragedy," a 4-hour CBS miniseries that would seem to be a natural for the November sweeps. Look for it to start generating buzz early, with Mailer behind the teleplay and Fontana and Levinson, the team responsible for "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Oz," behind the production. The miniseries is based on the 1996 book by Larry Schiller, an author who has also published a book on JonBenet Ramsey's murder and was the driving force behind the recent CBS movie, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town." Schiller, who will direct "An American Tragedy," is an old pal of Mailer's who collaborated with him on "The Executioner's Song" and the similar-sounding "American Mystery," about Lee Harvey Oswald.

However, don't be surprised if, while perusing the casting sheet for "American Tragedy" (supplied to us by Backstage Pass), you sense the production seems to have a certain insignificance to it. That's because this is the second casting call to go out. The roles of O.J., Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro and other lead players have already been advertised. Still, these peripheral characters don't exactly inspire images of "Inherit the Wind" for a post-civil rights era. But it could be worse. They could've asked Rosey Grier to play himself.

ALSO:

Pick To Click: When the Past Is More Than Prologue

Fifteen years ago a critic of National Public Radio complained that it observed way too many "anniversaries" of news events instead of actually reporting today's news. Turns out NPR was just ahead of its time: Anniversaries have become a rich trove for journalism, print and electronic. In just the past month hundreds of hours of airtime and gallons of ink have been expended looking back at the Columbine massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing and the fall of Saigon. (Makes you shudder to think of the Elian remembrances we'll get a year from now.)

But of all the media, cable TV may be the most frequent user of Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine. Today you can expect plenty of coverage of the National Guard shootings at Kent State University, which happened on this date 30 years ago. Besides the usual cable-news coverage, "20th Century With Mike Wallace" devotes an hour to the killings at 7 p.m. Thursday on the History Channel. And "Kent State: The Day the War Came Home" — a title Walter Cronkite might take some issue with — airs at 10 p.m. Friday on TLC. -- Aaron Barnhart/The Star

The daily digest ... for May 4, 2000: Streaming video of this weekend's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner with President Clinton and Jay Leno is now online at the C-SPAN Web site ... And NBC has finally decided to let the "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" writers loose on the Pets.com v. Robert Smigel. Smigel's character, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, has scheduled a "press conference" for tonight's show. We'll have full coverage tomorrow.

Previously on TV Barn:
3 May: "Later" with Dick Wolf
2 May: Time Warner and ABC make up ... for now
1 May: Time Warner, ABC go to war; the V-chip (II); Dave returns to England
28 April: Reader mail: Pets.com-troversy, Fox News vs. the others, TV Barn spam
27 April: What happened to the V-chip; more on puppets
26 April: Fox News Channel rocks; Scully directs "X-Files"
25 April: Pets.com sues over sock puppet
24 April: Earth Day on ABC; Elian on display

On this date... in 1973, PBS marks another first by showing female nudity on network television. Going blue is the cast of a TV adaptation of Bruce Jay Friedman's off-Broadway play "Steambath." Valerie Perrine and Shirley Kirkes are trapped in a sauna which seems more like a "Twilight Zone"-ish afterlife for them. Also telling their stories in the box are Bill Bixby and Herb Edelman. God happens to be the attendant listening to their tales and picking up the towels. -- Tom Heald