Jonathan Storm | Credit CIA series at least for ambition

Dripping with ambition and achievement,

The Company

spans half the world and decades of spy-versus-spy history. It's loaded with stunning cinematography and stirring dramatic set pieces.

Is it TNT's fault that most viewers aren't longing for a slug of strong, black tea or a jug of slivovitz?

The mini-series rolls out in two-hour installments on three successive Sundays, beginning at 8 tonight. So much of it is striking, particularly the work of two of the leads, Alfred Molina (The Da Vinci Code, Frida) and Michael Keaton (Batman, Live From Baghdad), who play CIA men with antithetical spy styles.

Give it a chance, and you could find its beautifully framed scenes and often-literary dialogue compelling. Or, you might just get fed up with sporadic pronouncements and actions that you've seen many times before.

"Counterespionage requires the patience of a saint," says one of the principals. So does The Company.

The legendary producing-directing Scott brothers, Ridley (Black Hawk Down, Gladiator) and Tony (Man on Fire, Enemy of the State), are key executive producers of the mini, based on Robert Littell's historical novel of the same name about the CIA. Emmy winner Mikael Salomon (Band of Brothers) directs.

It pretty much covers the whole Cold War, from intrigue in Berlin after World War II, through the Hungarian Revolution and the Bay of Pigs, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Filmed in Toronto (a less-expensive stand-in for London, Washington, and other American settings), Budapest (where one can mimic all of Eastern Europe and Russia) and Puerto Rico (no production allowed in Cuba), it unfolds in three stories with different tones. Each can stand alone, but the trio work much better together as a whole.

Chris O'Donnell, dreamy enough to be McDreamy, but cast in Grey's Anatomy as Dr. McVet, provides the young point of view at the center of the saga as Jack McAuliffe. Recruited into espionage out of Yale, along with two of his friends, his character makes plenty of the usual wrong moves, like falling in love with the beautiful and tormented ballet dancer who provides him juicy secrets from the Soviets.

Molina is bluff and unstoppable as the throwback espionage genius Harvey "The Sorcerer" Torriti, a highly functional alcoholic whose water cooler really is loaded with slivovitz, a clear, Eastern European brandy.

"The Goths are at the damn gate, plain and simple, and somebody's got to man the damn gate," he tells the callow McAuliffe, assigned to be The Sorcerer's apprentice.

Egotism runs deep in the spy game. Players on both sides are convinced their actions are all that can save an out-of-control world.

Keaton is a revelation as the nerdy and intense James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence, who makes a big mistake early and then chain-smokes his way into obsession over finding the mole in his outfit.

"It's miserable. It's miserable," he told a questioner, when asked about the smoking at the semiannual Television Critics Association gathering last month.

Director Salomon loved it. "We all regret that smoking has gone away, because as a former cameraman, you love atmosphere. You love the way it catches the light."

Light and atmosphere play such a big part in The Company. Contrast the rooftops-of-Berlin scene early in the show - moody as Mary Poppins on barbiturates and one step from pure black-and-white, like so much of The Company - with the sunny colors of summertime in Mother Russia that come soon after.

But The Company is not always new, and much seems inauthentic. McAuliffe ditches Eastern spies by scooting through the house of mirrors at a carnival (ooh, the symbolism!). Russian spooks "surreptitiously" exchange info, scrunching next to each other on one park bench when there are scads of empty ones all around.

Still, ambition must be recognized. Even those who find The Company as unwatchable as Big Brother will have to acknowledge it as another noble effort by TNT to battle the vast summer broadcast wasteland of 99-cent reality shows. And a big chunk of viewers will get a kick out of this unusually grand and intense TV ride.

TV Review

The Company

Debuts at 8 tonight on TNT