ELLIOTT'S FINESSE

With his square jaw, flinty eyes, and fluffy hair, David James Elliott is so gosh-darn good-looking, it's a wonder he's not just another bland pretty-boy. But as he's proving weekly on JAG (NBC, Saturdays, 8-9 p.m.) and in this week's two-part movie DEGREE OF GUILT (NBC, Oct. 29 and 30, 9-11 p.m. each night), Elliott is a pretty-boy with backbone. In JAG, Elliott plays Navy lieutenant Harmon Rabb Jr., known as Harm. A trained lawyer, Harm serves in the Judge Advocate General corps -- thus the ''JAG'' of the title -- and investigates criminal cases in the military.

JAG is no courtroom-bound lawyer show, though. Created by producer-writer Donald P. Bellisario, overseer of such brawny adventure fare as Magnum, P.I. and Quantum Leap, JAG goes for action -- military action. So far, Harm has split legal hairs while speeding beneath the sea in a submarine, flying through the sky in a fighter jet, and barreling across a desert outpost in a dusty Humvee.

There's nothing new about JAG's plots; they're the sort of good-guy-against-the-establishment stuff you'd expect, with the scripts (including a recent one cowritten by the mystery novelist Robert Crais) a slight cut above most hour-long dramas. But Elliott has quickly established himself as a real TV star anyway. He radiates the sort of easy, low-key confidence that makes an actor watchable week after week. In the pilot episode, Elliott was teamed with Andrea Parker as his JAG partner; she was fine, but there wasn't much chemistry between them. Bellisario must have noticed this, because by the second JAG, Parker had been replaced by Tracey Needham as Lieut. Meg Austin. Since I noted Elliott's good looks, it's only fair to say that Needham exudes the sexiest perkiness in prime time, and she and Elliott are terrific at turning dry military jargon into flirty byplay.

Elliott's TV movie, Degree of Guilt, is based on Richard North Patterson's best-selling novel of the same name, as well as on a subsequent Patterson page-turner, Eyes of a Child. I haven't read the books, but it's all too easy to notice that this awkwardly constructed four hours was made from two separate stories. Elliott plays criminal attorney Christopher Paget. In the first night of Degree, Paget is defending Mary Carelli (NYPD Blue's Sharon Lawrence), who is accused of murdering a writer. Carelli, we are told, is a former lover of Paget's and the mother of his now-teenage son.

In the second part of the TV movie, the Carelli case having been tidied up, Paget is free to pitch some serious woo to his legal associate, Terri Peralta, played by Daphne Zuniga of Melrose Place. (It's a reunion of sorts for Zuniga and Elliott, since Melrose fans will remember the latter as having played -- and so convincingly, too -- a footballer sex-addicted to, among others, Courtney Thorne-Smith's Alison.) Terri is separated from her rotten, unemployed husband (Vincent Ventresca), who is soon found dead; Paget is fingered for the crime. Who really dunnit? I'm pretty sure you'll find the end of the four hours as dramatically unsatisfying as I did.

Still, Elliott looks as dashing in a charcoal gray lawyer's suit as in Navy whites. He even does pretty well grappling with Degree's lumpy dialogue, which in Cynthia Whitcomb's teleplay of Patterson's prose presents Elliott with such chewy morsels as ''You look -- well, I was going to say 'deeply troubled,' but you're also one of the saner people I know.'' Huh?

As always, Zuniga -- no matter what emotion a scene calls for -- looks as if she's about to burst into tears. Elliott gets his best dramatic support in the two nights of Degree from Sisters' Patricia Kalember as a no-nonsense judge. In general, however, Degree of Guilt isn't nearly as engaging as your average episode of JAG. JAG: B Degree of Guilt: C

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