ALL NEW TRIALS BY FIRE

By GINIA BELLLAFANTE

What an auspicious beginning it had: a captivating plot that centered on the murder of a 15-year-old prostitute; suspects who included a malevolently elegant businessman, a sleazy psychiatrist and a drug-addicted movie star; and, in the starring role, impassioned defense attorney Teddy Hoffman, played by Daniel Benzali as a man of such unwavering rectitude that he made lawyer jokes seem as gauche as postmortem Nixon bashing. And yet with all that going for it, Steven Bochco's Murder One finished last season as the 74th-ranked show in network prime time and seemed fated for dismissal.

Instead, it was given a reprieve--but there have been alterations. This season the brooding Benzali has been replaced by Anthony LaPaglia, whose new character, Jimmy Wyler, is younger, sexier and more emotionally accessible. Meanwhile, the show's ambitious concept of following a single case all season has been scuttled in favor of offering three separate trials that will last about six weeks each. Despite the changes, Bochco insists that the show has maintained its integrity. Says he: "We haven't dumbed it down."

Judging by the evidence so far, they haven't. When the revamped series returned last week, it again stood out among the new crop of TV dramas. While too many of the others are either morally preachy Touched by an Angel clones or inept attempts at re-creating the X-Files, Murder One remains a fine legal thriller with a robust, well-observed appreciation for the egotists who are drawn into the web of splashy criminal trials. Newcomer Wyler is a prosecutor turned defense attorney who lives in a world ethically messier than his predecessor's. Wyler's father took bribes, he himself cuts deals with smarmy tabloid reporters, and he is not above seeking the limelight. There is a becoming earthiness to Wyler that LaPaglia pulls off effortlessly.

But the actor wasn't the first choice to replace Benzali's Hoffman, whose steely self-control and dour sanctimony made him almost unbearable by season's end. "Danny's main strength was an enigmatic, very still quality, which I was really attracted to," reflects Bochco. "But he didn't do much beyond that with any particular ease." After approaching too costly stars like Alan Alda and Danny Glover, Bochco settled on LaPaglia, a talented character actor who has made his mark in a number of independent films including Bulletproof Heart and the current Steve Buscemi film Trees Lounge. Bochco then set about retooling the show to exploit the dramatic possibilities the new character offered. Says LaPaglia: "The character of Hoffman was a statesman who pretty much took the moral high ground. My character is more human in that he screws up and then tries to fix it. I think the fall from grace and the recovery from that is always more interesting to play than somebody who never falters."

The case that brings Wyler into the series is, once again, a crime rooted salaciously in sex. Up for re-election, the Governor of California is murdered in bed with his mistress, and the suspect is a demure schoolteacher, Sharon Rooney (Missy Crider) who appears too Kate Moss-frail to have actually pulled any triggers. Frustrated when he's passed over for a promotion in the prosecutors' office, Wyler manages to grab the job of defending her. In turn, Hoffman's former associates recruit the young gun with the star-making case to head their firm while their old boss, we are told, is off in Europe indefinitely to repair his broken marriage.

Also gone this year is Stanley Tucci's viciously charismatic villain Richard Cross, who died from AIDS in last season's final episode. The shady character in the current case is played, against type, by The Waltons dad Ralph Waite. With none of the digressions and subplots that burdened Murder One early on last year, the show moves along at a perfectly clipped pace. In the second episode this week, Rooney is already in court and standing trial.

As promising as the new Murder One may be, it will have an uphill battle against bruising competition. Even after the network moved it to a safer slot on Monday night, the series never fully recovered from its disastrous initial face-off against the popular medics of ER. Now it has been scheduled against NBC's stratospherically rated Seinfeld and Suddenly Susan. Still, that ABC had enough faith in Murder One to renew it is one of the happier notes in this very dismal TV season.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles