The Company owes a debt of gratitude to the feature film The Good Shepherd - and an apology.

Both deal with Ivy league graduates recruited to join the CIA in its early days. But where the Matt Damon/Angelina Jolie movie proved taut and compelling, The Company often seems bloated.

That's surprising given that Ridley and Tony Scott are the executive producers of the limited series premiering at 8 p.m. Sunday on TNT. Between them, they've made a half-dozen cinematic blockbusters.

Chris O'Donnell plays Jack McAuliffe, a young idealist who finds himself going from the Yale crew team to operative in West Berlin in the early '50s. He wants the world to be a better place, and if that means "handling" information on the other side of the Iron Curtain, so be it.

His station chief is Alfred Molina as a man consumed with bitterness but good at his job. He doesn't let morals get in the way of duty. Nor does he let duty get in the way of his love affair with the bottle.

Back in Washington, D.C., the internal workings of the CIA are in flux. Bureaucrats spend half their time trying to discover moles within the agency and the other half trying to justify why they can't intervene in international affairs they helped foment.

There's the cautious CIA chief Allen Dulles (Cedric Smith) trying to do the bidding of presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Across the table is counterespionage boss James Angleton, portrayed with a nerdish reticence by Michael Keaton. Why is an actor normally so full of life so restrained here?

Military confrontations dominate the second two hours of the series (Aug. 12), which largely deals with the 1956 civilian uprising in Hungary and the Soviet's crushing response. After being tortured in a Hungarian prison, Jack joins the resistance. He repeatedly calls home for help. It doesn't come.

Things fare little better when Jack helps organize the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Having survived Hungary, he's got a bad feeling about this new mission. Still, he's a soldier. You can count on him to fight the good fight.

Night three brings us to the early '70s. By this time Angleton is on the trail of the mole, determined to get him cornered.

Balancing the CIA intrigue over all three nights is KGB head Starlick (Ulrich Thomsen), who recruits one of McAuliffe's Yale classmates (Rory Cochrane) to be his eyes and ears in Washington.

At six hours, The Company is certainly an ambitious production, with locales as varied as Eastern Europe and Puerto Rico, and a budget that allows for a lot of military hardware. (The scenes of Russian tanks in Hungary and the Cuban invasion are impressive.) It's also violent; a lot of people die, especially in the second installment.

Given the talent involved (Molina is especially intense, although O'Donnell is too old to portray a 1950s college kid) you knew this show would eventually find its legs. Segments two and three achieve a fluidity lacking in the opening two hours. How you gonna keep 'em down on the couch when you kick things off with so much dull exposition?

If you're a casual fan of spy novels, The Company will probably suffice. If you prefer your miniseries swift and stimulating, this 40-year survey of U.S.-Soviet spycraft will be harder to embrace.

The Company

• What: A six-hour dramatic history of the Central Intelligence Agency

• When: Three consecutive Sundays at 8 p.m. Repeats at 10 p.m.

• Where: TNT

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592