ESPN'S Bronx Tale

Normally, I'd say something snide about ESPN and how it should stick to reporting news rather than making movies, but when the network foists the likes of "Who's Now?" during its broadcasts, what would be the point?

ESPN again ventures into Hollywood tonight with the miniseries "The Bronx Is Burning," (ESPN, 10 p.m.) which tells the turmoil of the New York Yankees. The miniseries is unavailable for preview, so all I can say about it is that I hope it's better than ESPN's other offerings in this genre.

Certainly, there is a lot of material to mine for "Bronx," and the cast is first rate: Oliver Platt plays George Steinbrenner, while John Turturro is Billy Martin and Daniel Sunjata ("Rescue Me") plays Reggie Jackson. The clash of egos among the three even as the Yankees won the World Series in 1977 and 1978 is almost the stuff of legend.

The problem is, ESPN movies rarely find the story when they are made. Take the one with Brian Dennehy as Bob Knight. I didn't have a problem with Dennehy's performance, but the movie itself gave absolutely no insight into Knight - one minute he's a jerk, the next he's a nice guy, and so forth. We don't really learn why Knight is this way, nor does the movie portray many of the infamous incidents that marked Knight's career. Other bits of Knight's life were only mentioned in passing, such as a feud with then-Michigan coach Bill Frieder, without any context for the viewer.

Or take "Four Minutes," written by legendary sports scribe Frank Deford about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. The movie does a decent job in looking at Bannister's life and his quest to achieve what was thought impossible, but it leaves out the most interesting part of the story.

Months after Bannister broke the barrier, his own record was broken by Australia's John Landy. It set up one of the most famous races in the history of sports, when the two men competed against each other in a field of the top six runners in the world. In the final hundred or so yards, Landy was leading the race and turned his head to see where Bannister was. Bannister took advantage of Landy's mistake and burst ahead of him and set a new mile record. Despite being one of the most dramatic moments ever in sports, this race doesn't appear at all in the movie except as a footnote at the end.

Hopefully, "The Bronx Is Burning" will have learned from the mistakes of ESPN's other movie attempts.

MONDAY'S BEST BETS: Mondays have been a bit light of late, but not this week.

Because of the baseball All-Star Game tomorrow, "On The Lot" (Fox, 8 p.m.) returns to Monday temporarily to eliminate one of six filmmakers who submitted horror films last week. On the one hand, none of the horror films were that great (I liked the funny one about the old woman making a sandwich the best), but on the other hand, horror is a very tough genre to do, and if none of the directors had an inclination for it before, it makes it very difficult to write and direct a short film with that subject manner. After all, in Hollywood, if you were to make a horror movie, you'd hire someone like Wes Craven or Eli Roth to direct it, not someone who had no background or interest in horror. But I digress. Watch the show.

To wet your appetite for the All-Star Game, catch the Home Run Derby (ESPN, 8 p.m.) tonight.

If sports or movies aren't your thing, there are plenty of first run dramatic programs, including new episodes of "Kyle XY" (ABC Family, 8 p.m.), followed by the series premiere of "Greek," and "Big Love" (HBO, 9 p.m.), and the TNT duo of "The Closer" at 9 p.m. and "Heartland" at 10 p.m. VCR alert - "The Closer" is supposed to run a little long, so set your VCRs and DVRs accordingly.