TV REVIEW : ‘Untouchables’ Is Almost Unwatchable : Rehash of the ‘50s series, premiering on Channel 13 tonight, is replete with cardboard characters and corn.

The old adage about vice being easier to dramatize than virtue holds true once again with tonight’s two-hour premiere of the new syndicated version of “The Untouchables” (at 8 p.m. on KCOP Channel 13), which is comprised mostly of flashbacks of the pre-Prohibition lives of nemeses Eliot Ness and Al Capone. Guess which guy’s background will have you exiting most regularly for restroom and moonshine breaks?

Actually, in this superfluous rehash of a series, not even Capone is all that interesting. But, as played by the unforgettably sleepy-eyed, pug-faced character actor William Forsythe (“Dick Tracy”), he at least has a mobster’s steely determination and unpredictability in the face of ruthless duty, with a more youthful, Cagneyesque cast than Robert De Niro. As Ness, Tom Amandes is merely serviceable in the duty of trying to out-nice-guy film version nice-guy Kevin Costner, a sucker’s job.

Tonight’s pilot commences with the title gang of Treasury agents raiding one of Capone’s booze-making facilities. “How in hell did a man like this come to be?” asks a disgusted Ness, suddenly pensive. Just in case the question isn’t rhetorical, we then flash back to Capone’s 1910 Brooklyn boyhood as the young thug takes over his first corner, well on his way to bullying Depression-era Chicago.

The Ness reminiscings, meanwhile, offer unremittingly saintly and dull contrast. Upstanding teen Eliot gives a speech on the League of Nations while a girl in the audience sighs, “I’m gonna marry that man someday.” Young Al, meanwhile, is virtually forming a League of Nations of his own in bringing disparate gangsters together while insulting whores for romantic kicks in his spare time.

The painful obviousness of the series is cemented when then-unknowns Capone and Ness lock eyes in a darkened movie theater, both sharing a slow-motion premonition of their epic struggle to come.

Needless to say, director Eric Laneuville’s slow-mo has nothing on Brian De Palma’s equally strained slow-mo in the ‘80s feature version, and the show’s corniness has nothing on the original ‘50s series, except the ability to portray graphic bullet holes in foreheads. For anyone who’s seen the superior forerunners, anyhow, “The Untouchables” isn’t worth touching with a 10-foot-pole.