SERIES PREMIERE: I’ve seen six of the 10 episodes of this new series, which launches American Crime Story with a lengthy dramatization of the O.J. Simpson trial. Through the six hours, the drama really holds up, the courtroom moves and counter-moves are smartly and dramatically conveyed, and Courtney B. Vance and Sarah Paulson, as opposing attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Marcia Clark, deliver equally impressive and textured performances, even if their characters are less evenly matched. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the defendant with alternating bursts of anger and childlike confusion, and the behind-the-scenes revelations are as riveting as the excavations of old media reports. The only ham-handed portions are whenever we follow Simpson friend and attorney Robert Kardashian (played by David Schwimmer) home to his family, where we’re forced to see little Kimmy and her sisters learn wide-eyed, first-hand lessons about the value of fame. John Travolta as Robert Shapiro, and Nathan Lane as F. Lee Bailey, play other members of Simpson’s “Dream Team,” and the teleplay by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, who also wrote Ed Wood and The People vs. Larry Flynt, takes it all seriously, but never ponderously. For full stories, see Ed Bark’s Uncle Barky’s Bytes and David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower.