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Alec Baldwin, as we know, has his political opinions. Less well known is that Baldwin has been sharing with TV executives his quiet passion for history. Television, he says, should present "relevant, historical dramas" about epochal events that have shaped our world today. He says he has pitched several such productions to the big networks, but that each time "the networks just completely glaze over."

Thankfully, executives at TNT stayed clear-eyed when Baldwin told them he wanted to retell the story of the 1945 Nuremberg war trials. The result is a masterful two-part miniseries, "Nuremberg," that begins 8 p.m. Sunday. With no slight intended to Stanley Kramer's 1961 classic "Judgment at Nuremberg," this brilliant new production should help keep the memory of that watershed tribunal alive for another generation.

There were 21 defendants at Nuremberg, all Nazi leaders accused of "crimes against humanity." But the trials also passed judgment on the moral agnosticism of the Nazi elite. Many of these men liked their consciences as clean as their fingernails. So they would simply claim they had "just followed orders." By the end of the Nuremberg trials, which took place in 1945-46, that claim would be discredited — or rather, buried under a mountain of documentary evidence on the horrors of the Holocaust brought forth by the prosecution.

Baldwin, the movie's lead, along with director Yves Simoneau and screenplay writer David Rintels, breathes not only life but also fire into these moral and intellectual matters. The film opens with chilling, boisterous footage of one of Hitler's military parades and sustains the emotional tenor of that opening throughout.

With spare, pungent writing by Rintels (who adapted the book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph Persico) and a terrific turn by Baldwin, "Nuremberg" gallops along its first two hours. Yet the viewer is never denied the vital facts that put this movie atop Baldwin's wish list.

Baldwin plays Robert Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court justice sent to Germany to head up the prosecution. His nemesis, and the trial's star defendant, is Hermann Goering (Brian Cox). If Adolf Eichmann, in Hannah Arendt's phrase, embodied "the banality of evil," then Goering is more like the absurdity of evil.

In the opening minutes of the movie, Hitler's No. 2 roars up to a P.O.W. camp in a limousine. He embraces an Allied officer as "a fellow airman" and magnanimously offers the man his surrender. Charmed, the officer takes Goering down to the officers' tent to tie one on.

Cox seizes the vortex of Goering's complex personalities. We see the military man bound by honor; the cruel psychopath who laughs at his fellow inmates' sufferings; and, further down, the disturbingly efficient executor of Hitler's plan.

"The victors will always be the judge, the vanquished always the accused," says Goering at one point, and with such certitude that you almost feel sorry for the old blighter.

The film's only major female role is given to ex-"Law & Order" knockout Jill Hennessy, who plays Jackson's secretary and, increasingly, his love interest. (Their little flirtation doesn't get in story's way, thank goodness.)

There are many fine touches and supporting roles in "Nuremberg," which co-stars Christopher Plummer, Herbert Knaup and Michael Ironside. For too long TNT has been made to stand in the shadow of HBO. No longer. With "Nuremberg" TNT has produced a movie for the ages — and done a good deed as well.

Part 2 of "Nuremberg" airs at 8 p.m. Monday on TNT.

On this date...

in 1951, CBS coverage of the Molly Pitcher Handicap at Monmouth Park in New Jersey becomes the first color telecast of a sporting event.

July 15: in 1996, NBC and Microsoft combine forces for an all-news channel named MSNBC, replacing NBC's all talk-show channel "America's Talking" on cable systems.

July 16: in 1998, for the first time ever, the "Late Show with David Letterman" tries to put an audience member to sleep on purpose, as North Dakotan Gary Zick is hooked up to sleep monitoring equipment. It's such a large network "Time Killer" that the scheduled debut of "Pat and Kenny Read Oprah Transcripts" (featuring "Delta Burke") is delayed a week. -- Tom Heald

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