THESE ARE THEIR LIVES

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

When documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' latest opus, Thomas Jefferson, debuted on PBS last month, complete with the voice of Gwyneth Paltrow reciting the diary entries of Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Coolidge, at least one history buff in America bailed out before the closing credits. "I couldn't bear it," says Michael Cascio, executive producer of the A&E network's hour-long documentary series Biography. Cascio is annoyed that Burns' often tiresomely long dissertations are the standard by which all TV documentaries should be measured. "We're trying to develop a style without having to linger on a meadow for 45 seconds," Cascio says. "Biography speaks the language of TV. We don't try to pretend we're doing arty independent cinema."

Indeed, Biography's simple but rarely simpleminded approach to its subjects--each episode profiles a famous figure--has made it basic cable's version of must-see TV. Currently celebrating its 10th anniversary, Biography has gone from a weekly series to one that airs six times a week (Monday through Saturday, 8 p.m. et). The show's 1996 ratings were its highest ever, and it regularly draws 11,000 more viewers each week than CNN's hit Larry King Live. Success has led to spin-offs. Late last year A&E launched Biography for Kids. In January the network started a monthly magazine, also titled Biography, filled with profiles and quizzes like "Who Am I?" (sample question: "I became a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and in 1853 was appointed Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce..." Answer: Jefferson Davis). A line of books associated with the series will be published this year. An all-Biography cable channel is set to arrive in 1998.

The series certainly has no shortage of rerun fodder for such a venture. During its decade on-air, Biography has produced more than 480 episodes, looking at subjects from Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar to Howard Stern and Judy Garland. Each hour (occasional specials air at two hours) moves along economically, dwelling on no single aspect of a person's life but rather cramming in the whole cradle-to-grave (or cradle-to-this-minute) story. While a filmmaker could produce an entire documentary on the subject of, say, Attila the Hun's retreat from Rome, Biography's look at the 5th century conqueror spends scarcely one minute examining that historic event. Compensation comes in the details offered about Attila's life, like the fact that as an expression of his humility, he ate only from wooden bowls rather than kingly pewter.

As each episode of Biography runs at a fast clip, so too does the series' production schedule. Most documentaries take years to make; an episode of Biography is created in less than six months, and often in a matter of weeks. Slapdash development shows: episodes can vary widely in terms of quality. The series has nearly 500 producers, associate producers, researchers and technical-staff members deployed in up to 10 different production teams around the country churning out 130 episodes a year. Two of the units are actually contracted divisions of cbs News Productions and abc News Productions. This is a savvy, cost-effective move on A&E's part, given those organizations' vast photo and film archives. Says Cascio: "The big rule around here is, you've got to find the baby picture."

For coverage of 20th century figures, Biography's producers do a good job of following the series' other mandate: turning up a chatty group of the subject's friends and relatives. Producers can generally procure interviews with living subjects too (if not, they rely on existing news footage), since the series does not aim for Hard Copy-esque lambasting. If anything, Biography is uncritical to a fault. An episode on Carl Sagan had movie producer Lynda Obst rhapsodizing about the astronomer's romance with her friend Annie Druyan. The sing-songy-voiced narrator seemed just as enchanted with the story, even though the reality was far from a fairy tale: Sagan was married and a father when he took up with Druyan, who would become his third wife.

Filling up another year's worth of Biography episodes is something Cascio does not find daunting. The series has had success with a broad variety of shows, The Gambino Crime Family being its best rated and Nostradamus high on its most-watched list. Despite Biography's range, however, only 17% of its subjects have been women--and, sadly, Kathie Lee Gifford is among them. A little art-house selectiveness here would not hurt.