TV REVIEWS : Money, Sex, Murder, ‘Texas’ Style

O.J. Simpson trial watchers, especially those who are beginning to nod off, might find “Texas Justice” dramatic relief. Besides, this trial is over in two nights.

ABC, mercifully, is not promoting the obvious angle but viewers will be hard-pressed not to compare the true-life, four-hour miniseries about the 1977 seamy murder trial of Fort Worth multimillionaire T. Cullen Davis (Peter Strauss) with the Simpson case.

We’re talking money, sex and murder, Longhorn style.

Strauss’ Davis, an impossibly rich industrialist, bears the kind of easy confidence that comes with money. In Sunday’s episode, he shocks Texas society by marrying his mistress, a nervy, come-hither blonde (a coup of a role for Heather Locklear) who fancies short, hip-hugging skirts.

Inevitably, the marriage of booze, trinkets and baubles crashes to the floor like a tray of crystal, followed by a divorce judge who gives Priscilla Davis the keys to the kingdom. Two years after their separation, someone breaks into the Davis castle and shoots Priscilla, who survives, while slaying her 12-year-old daughter (from an earlier marriage) and Priscilla’s new lover.

Monday’s conclusion is absorbed with Davis’ Byzantine courtroom defense, featuring Dennis Franz--in an auspicious break from “NYPD Blue”--as Davis’ dogged defense attorney, Richard (Racehorse) Haynes. Franz gives the richest performance in the movie.

What this fashionably produced hoot displays on its sleeve is well-garnished sleaze. Its inherent problem is a total lack of sympathy for the two protagonists. And writer T. S. Cook had his hands full telescoping investigative reporter Gary Cartwright’s book “Blood Will Tell”: An FBI sting linking Davis with a supposed hit man (the brash Lewis Smith) is more fuzzy than clarifying.

Then again, ambiguity--the sense that we’ll either never know the truth or that Texas justice is an outrage--is provocatively earmarked by director Dick Lowry.

* “Texas Justice” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).