Potentially provocative 'Saddam' miniseries surprisingly dull

One can easily imagine how the production pitch went for HBO's new miniseries, "House of Saddam": "Hey, if you think Tony Soprano was something, then how about a show about a real ruthless strongman - Saddam Hussein!"

Unfortunately, where "The Sopranos" was a compelling study in power, excess and family loyalty, "House of Saddam," for all the material it would figure to have to work with in the Iraqi dictator, turns out to be merely boring.

Saddam seizes power, exterminates opposition, betrays those closest to him, alienates and agitates the United States and arrives at a fitting death - end of story.

The four-hour "House of Saddam" runs in four parts over two nights at 8 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, and Friday, Dec. 14, on the premium-cable channel. Directed by Alex Holmes and Jim O'Hanlon from a script by Holmes and Stephen Butchard, the British Broadcasting Corp. co-production tries to stay true to the known facts, but that's the problem. It doesn't imagine the full complexity of Saddam's life, the way David Chase imagined the full complexity of a Mafia boss. If that's unfair to compare this miniseries with one of the best dramas in TV history, hey, after all, it's not TV, it's HBO.

Igal Naor stars as Saddam, but aside from donning a bushy mustache he doesn't do anything to bring Saddam to life, to explain his tangled, turbulent motives. Much better is Shohreh Aghdashloo, already familiar from her role as a terrorist mother on "24," who plays Saddam's first wife, Sajida. She at least displays some real character and feeling; Saddam seems more the simple product of a nagging mother, how drearily Freudian.

The story opens in 2003, with the current President Bush promising to get Saddam and his sons and "liberate" Iraq, but then it kicks immediately back to 1979, when, emboldened by the Iranian revolution and determined to mount a reactionary response, Saddam seizes and consolidates power in a bloody coup.

"I know a traitor before he knows himself," he says, and indeed he eliminates the opposition before anyone can even think of opposing him.

He undertakes a war with Iran and an affair with a foxy blond schoolteacher with equally blithe consideration. Then the second part skips ahead to the end of the war in 1988, conveniently overlooking U.S. complicity in building up and arming Saddam and the Iraqi gassing of its own Kurdish citizens, although Uri Gavriel's "Chemical" Ali Hassan Al Majid makes references to that bombing later on.

Meanwhile, Philip Arditti is establishing himself as a full-fledged psychotic as Saddam's son Uday, and Saddam is busy killing off his half-brother, Said Taghmaoui's Barzan Ibrahim, which only serves to make Sajida even more mad than she already was as a disgraced spouse.

"Now look what you're left with," she says. "Men who are nothing but afraid of you."

It's a recipe for megalomaniacal disaster, all right, and it's going to be played out over next weekend's third and forth segments, after the first night ends with Iraq being stomped in the first Gulf War, but Saddam being saved by U.S. forces more concerned with political expediency than with doing what needs to be done.

"How sweet victory is," Saddam says, adding, "This comes direct from God."

Even so, for all its military action and borderline insanity, "House of Saddam" gives off the feeling that it ought to be a lot more interesting than it is, maybe because there's no shading to Naor's Saddam. He's a power-mad dictator who does what he feels is necessary to maintain control and is occasionally drawn into disasters by his own unfettered egotism, and that's all there is to it. And the script never really places any blame on the United States for helping to create and sustain this maniac in power.

This is the human-monster school of history, of a sort that blames World War II and the Holocaust entirely on Adolf Hitler. The thing is, even a monster like Frankenstein's is more interesting in its humanity than this bland, one-dimensional Saddam Hussein. HBO's mission, to create television better and more compelling than conventional TV, is not accomplished in "House of Saddam."

In the air

Remotely interesting: Barbara Walters interviews "The 10 Most Fascinating People" of the year at 9 p.m. today on ABC's WLS Channel 7, but with Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Frank Langella and Rush Limbaugh on the guest list, just what year is it, 1993?

CBS News and CBS Radio reporter Kimberly Dozier discusses her new book, "Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Survive the War in Iraq," beginning with a book signing at 11:30 a.m. today followed by a noon luncheon at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson, downtown.

End of the dial: WGN 720-AM "Extension 720" host Milt Rosenberg recently received the National Humanities Medal from President Bush.

Since it's after Thanksgiving, it's now safe to admit that, yes, WLIT 93.9-FM has again returned to a holiday-music format.