Fuhrman Agonistes

On

HBO's prison drama oz, chris-topher Meloni plays Chris Keller, a viperous predator. On NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, he's dogged cop Elliot Stabler. So he's an ideal choice to play one of the media monde's great Jekyll and Hydes: Mark Fuhrman. Fuhrman showed up in our living rooms during the O.J. Simpson trial as the cocky L.A. cop who had found the bloody glove. He testified to not having said "nigger" in the past decade; the defense found a taped interview through which he sprinkled the epithet like jimmies on a sundae, then used his perjury to imply that Simpson was framed by racists. A few years later, he resurfaced as a TV-news expert crime commentator. Was this Fuhrman or his nonevil twin?

Fuhrman redeemed himself — at least in the eyes of news-show bookers — by going to wealthy Greenwich, Conn., to look into the 1975 bludgeoning death of teenager Martha Moxley. The case had never been solved, though rumors pointed to two neighbor kids, Tommy and Michael Skakel, members of the extended Kennedy family. A bungled case, a famous name, the rich possibly getting off scot-free: the case was Fuhrman's white whale or, more accurately, his white O.J. After poking around, Fuhrman concluded that Michael had killed Moxley in a fit of jealousy because she liked abusive ladies' man Tommy better. This year a jury came to roughly the same conclusion, putting Michael away for murder.

Murder in Greenwich (USA, Nov. 15, 8 p.m. E.T.) adapts the 1998 Fuhrman book by the same name. As a true-crime rehash, it's shoddier than usual, especially marred by Moxley's corny narration from beyond the grave. ("No one knew what to think," she says. "There were no murders in heaven.") But as a snapshot of Fuhrman's self-image, it's fascinating. Fuhrman — as interpreted by Fuhrman — is a driven detective, frustrated by the Greenwich cops (he says they're "brain dead," lazy and afraid to offend their rich patrons) and an unforgiving world. We know that he is "the convicted perjurer who helped set O.J. Simpson free"--because the clumsy script has someone say it 15 seconds after he appears — but we get few details about his disgrace until late in the movie. By then, Murder has cast him as a persecuted working stiff. "Say 'nigger,' Detective Fuhrman!" a rich kid taunts him, as if teasing the help. The true star of the movie is Fuhrman's sense of grievance: against the media, other cops, the rich — against any snotty jerk who thinks he's better than Mark Fuhrman.

Meloni transcends the script, playing Fuhrman slyly, as a charismatic boor with a lizardy grin. But his performance only reminds us what the story could have been if told by someone not so close to the hero. As it is, it's a trite but inadvertently intriguing whodunit about a bitter adolescent whose vanity and resentment make him act out in ugly ways. Oh, and it's about Michael Skakel too.