BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

There have been far better versions and variations of "The Wizard of Oz" than Sci Fi's miniseries "Tin Man," but there have been worse, as well. None, however, required six maundering hours of your indulgence.

The usually appealing Zooey Deschanel rarely conveys more than bland stupefaction as DG (echoing Dorothy Gale), a disaffected young woman dreaming of escaping her sleepy town. She gets her wish, though hardly in the way she wanted or expected - she's transferred to the Outer Zone ("the O.Z." for short), where she encounters sundry mutations of the iconic figures from the 1939 classic film based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 perennial children's favorite.

Glitch (Alan Cumming) was a former trusted adviser to the missing queen before he had his brain removed; a zipper traverses his scalp where it was displaced. Cain (Neal McDonough) was a "tin man" - a security attaché - before he was tortured and his family savaged. Raw (Raoul Trujillo) is - well, screenwriters Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle didn't seem to put a lot of thought into Raw, but he's some watery variation on the Cowardly Lion.

Seems the sorceress Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson, who plays the role like a petulant Valley Girl) is wreaking havoc in the O.Z., terrorizing the citizenry in her quest to find a mysterious Emerald of the Eclipse, which, once found, will plunge the land into eternal darkness. (Not sure what the upside of this is for her, but OK, we'll proceed.)

Azkadellia sports tattoos across her chest that, when she heaves her bosom with resolved relish (and, no, this really isn't for kids), unleashes flying monkeys who are a lot more useful than her human army, known as "longcoats." The full extent of longcoats' training must be given over to swaggering menacingly, because otherwise, they are hands down the most inept battalion of boobs ever seen in a dystopian universe - they're perpetually all looking in the wrong direction, getting roughed up despite boasting greater numbers, or sending too few stormtroopers to guard important persons or strongholds.

Sunday night's installment moves at a decent clip because it has a lot of exposition to cover. Monday's episode offers our heroes on a wearying journey to, basically, nowhere; it's like the filmmakers forgot to drop their narrative propeller in the water. Things are finally resolved at protracted length on Tuesday. Great swatches of time are spent reinforcing how important the emerald is and how no one really knows where it is. There's little internal logic; characters and their abilities are inconsistent and, if a hole gets too deep, then DG merely needs to flex a magic tattoo on her left hand and we're off to the next vexation.

"Tin Man's" biggest positive is production designer Michael Joy's work. Cribbing a little from Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," he creates a world of retro-futuristic gizmos and ornate decay. Nice visuals, however, scarcely justify wading through such a wearying slog lacking both heart and a brain.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com
www.insidesocal.com/tv/review>

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TIN MAN

>What: Zooey Deschanel stars in this 21st-century variant on "The Wizard of Oz."
>Where: Sci Fi Channel.
>When: 9 Sunday; 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday.
>In a nutshell: Overlong, meandering and arbitrarily plotted.

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