`Family Of Spies' Is A Family Tragedy

``Family of Spies,'' CBS miniseries, 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday; 8 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, Channel 7.

Factual spy stories are often a lot less exciting and interesting than fictional ones. The latter generally involve attempted murders, double loyalties, the CIA and a great deal of derring-do. True stories can often be actually humdrum.

Certainly that's the case with ``Family of Spies,'' CBS' five-hour mini-series that purports to tell the story of John Walker Jr., a senior chief petty officer in the Navy who sold secrets to the Soviets for more than two decades before getting caught in 1985. His spying was handled as such a routine activity and involved such undramatic things - military codes on crytographic punchcards that dealt with military maneuvers - that there wouldn't be much of a movie if the focus weren't on Walker's home life.

It is this aspect of the Walker saga, in which spying was simply a routine part of it, that gives ``Family of Spies'' its dramatic impetus.

Walker, as re-created by Powers Boothe from a script by Richard DeLong Adams, based on two books, Pete Earley's ``Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring'' and Howard Blum's ``I Pledge Allegiance,'' was a basically amoral person. It appears nothing meant much to him except money. It never seems to have occurred to him he was being a traitor in selling military information. His approach seems to have been that he knew there was a market for such things and he merely cashed in on it.

And while he talked about marriage and family, the former didn't mean much to him and he saw the latter as just more recruits for his business.

Boothe gives Walker a great amount of charm - his easy camaraderie with his buddies and superiors, his girl-in-every-port sexuality almost turns Walker into a recruiting poster. Small wonder no one suspected Walker - he never behaved like a spy because he didn't really think of himself as a spy. He thought of himself as a businessman; some of the funniest scenes are between Walker and his Soviet contact, known only as Boris I, who persists in arranging meetings and acting in true spy traditions while Walker was annoyed with these shenanigans.

Walker also saw himself as a free agent who could do pretty much as he pleased when it came to his marriage. Although we learn, in the early scenes, that his wife, Barbara, splendidly played by Lesley Ann Warren, adores him and that they are the parents of four children, it's clear Walker would rather be drinking with buddies and flirting with barmaids than looking after his family.

Eventually he divorced Barbara and practically abandoned his family - until they grew up and he tried to interest them in joining his operation. By then it included his brother and an old Navy buddy, but Walker looked upon this as not a spy ring so much as a business venture for which he was the chief executive officer.

With this emphasis upon personal relationships, the spying almost becomes incidental as we watch Walker in operation and observe how his behavior nearly destroyed Barbara Walker. No one plays neurotics better than Warren and this role gives her ample opportunity, from her earliest scenes, as a dutiful, loving wife, intent upon pleasing her dashing husband, through her descent into alcoholism and eventual decision to turn Walker in to the FBI.

Andrew Lowery plays the grown-up son, Michael, giving a nicely goofy, puppy-dog charm, as he desperately seeks his father's approval. And his romantic scenes with Jenny Robertson, who plays Rachel, his eventual wife, are charming. Their characterizations make Walker seem even more callous and unfeeling because he's taking such advantage of them.

Walker's daughters come and go but the roles are sketchy, as is that of Jerry Whitworth, Walker's buddy, played by Graham Beckel. In fact, you get the feeling chunks of the script may be missing.

Adams' script, at best, seems choppy, jumping from year to year without ever doing much to fill us in on what happened in the interim. If anything, ``Family of Spies'' would have been much better had it been longer, maybe even turned into a weekly series, since it often seems like a kind of dramatic sitcom anyway. In addition, the Walkers' trial must have been interesting, and may have supplied some insight into Walker's behavior, but the film ends with the arrest of Walker and his cohorts.

``Family of Spies'' is unsatisfactory as a spy story - but as a kind of domestic tragedy - the American Dream gone badly askew - it has its own fascination, thanks particularly to Boothe and Warren who do excellent work.