Once Again Chasing the O.J. Story

Eight years ago today, at 11:45 p.m., O.J. Simpson’s flight from L.A. to Chicago was cleared for takeoff. Less than a half-hour later, the bodies of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman were found.

Simpson, of course, would be on a flight from the law days later, crouched in the back of his white Ford Bronco as friend Al Cowlings drove, the infamous police pursuit etching itself in the memories of millions on June 17, 1994.

“Minute by Minute” (10 p.m. A&E;), a documentary series that reconstructs news events through eyewitness accounts, tries to take a fresh, dramatic look at the chase and its effects tonight. But too often it comes across as a rehashing of overly familiar material, and a second-rate one at that.

The title is a bit of a misnomer because the show is hardly a minutely detailed account. Understandably, it condenses events into highlights, giving snapshots of, say, the tactics of law enforcement at a given point or the thoughts of Nicole’s sister Denise when O.J. Simpson threatened suicide.

Far less understandable are factual inaccuracies and the uneven if not misleading use of news footage, reenactments, still photos and interviews. Sometimes, the blunders are innocuous, such as visuals that don’t quite match the script. At other times, they undermine the show’s credibility: Early on, the program states that LAPD officers “discovered” the victims’ bodies, making no mention of the fact they were initially found by neighbors. And beyond that, how much can you trust a documentary that recycles the same video clips to illustrate different moments in the chase?

Last week’s “Minute by Minute,” about Dr. Jerri Nielsen battling her own cancer while stuck at the South Pole in 1999, was far better constructed. But tonight, as with many things pertaining to the Simpson case, what you see is not necessarily what you get.