"Titanic," a Mini-Series, Starts on Saturday on ABC There's no new way to sink the Titanic, not after so many books and movies and so much James Cameron. And it probably doesn't make sense to experiment with alternative endings, even if it is fun to imagine what might have happened if the ship had sailed safely past the iceberg. There might not be a Widener Library at Harvard. Without "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," Debbie Reynolds probably would not have an Oscar nomination. It is even possible that Mr. Cameron would never have gotten a green light for "Avatar." ABC instead went with alternative beginnings. "Titanic" is a mini-series timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster, told in four parts. Three will be broadcast on Saturday, with the finale on Sunday, and each episode covers the same set of characters, but from different perspectives and at varying stages of the journey. Nigel Stafford-Clark ("Bleak House") created this "Titanic," but it was written by Julian Fellowes, whose hugely popular series, "Downton Abbey," was almost as much of a hit for public television as Mr. Cameron's film was for Paramount and Fox. Mr. Fellowes has his own claim to the story: the first season of that series opened with the news that the Titanic had sunk and that the heir to Downton Abbey had almost certainly gone down with the ship. So it's no surprise that this account of the disaster of the century is an upper deck/lower deck costume drama that could just as easily be called "Downton Shipwreck." A few characters, like John Jacob Astor IV and Harry Elkins Widener, are real, but most of the principals are made up, and there is plenty of romance and intrigue in first class and steerage. At least in the early stages, the series is quite entertaining. But over all, the mini-series suffers from defensive storytelling; it's a narrative driven in splintered directions less by inspiration than by avoidance. It's so hard not to contrast this "Titanic" with Mr. Cameron's 1997 movie, and impossible not to compare any shipboard love story with the one acted out by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Especially now that Mr. Cameron - lest we forget - has released his "Titanic" in 3-D in movie theaters and even found a way to expand on his 2003 documentary about his exploration of the wreck, "Ghosts of the Abyss." In the program "Titanic: The Final Word With James Cameron," on the National Geographic Channel earlier this month, Mr. Cameron grappled with remaining mysteries about the wreckage debris - mostly technical. In that documentary, in which he was identified as the channel's "explorer in residence," he explained that his original pitch for "Titanic" was an easy sell. All he had to say to studio executives was: "this ship, and Romeo and Juliet." Perhaps accordingly, Mr. Fellowes has chosen to have not one romance but several, diluting expectations, maybe, and also the spice. And that makes the multiple courtships as perfunctory as any on "The Love Boat." Harry Widener (Noah Reid), an American heir and rare-book collector, is smitten with Georgiana (Perdita Weeks), a rebellious daughter of an earl. In between seatings, an Italian waiter, Paolo (Glen Blackhall), an aspiring immigrant to America, woos a saucy English stewardess, Annie (Jenna-Louise Coleman). Linus Roache ("Law & Order") is the Earl of Manton, a variation on the benevolent landowner of Downton Abbey: kindly and polite, even to his social inferiors, despite the snobbism of his Anglo-Irish wife, Louisa, Countess of Manton (Geraldine Somerville). The earl tries to bridge class boundaries by inviting John Batley (Toby Jones), an employee, to tea, even though the Batleys are not first-class passengers. John is meekly grateful for his boss's magnanimity, but his wife, Muriel, an Irish former beauty, instead simmers with resentment. Played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, the actress who was the hateful estranged wife of Mr. Bates in "Downton Abbey," Muriel is just one of several characters who make viewers root for the iceberg. Mr. Fellowes drags in other conflicts of the period, besides class. A Roman Catholic electrician who worked in the Belfast shipyards seizes the chance to escape Protestant oppression in Northern Ireland by immigrating to America. There is even an anarchist on the lam who takes on a fake identity aboard ship and flirts with a married woman. The various strands stop and start, overlap and intertwine, but ultimately the characters and their story lines are thin and never merge into a particularly inventive or interesting whole. The end is no surprise, obviously, but by the third episode it's hard to wonder - or care - who survives and how. More than 1,500 people died on the Titanic in the first black hours of April 15, 1912, and 100 years later the world is still obsessed with that disaster. This small-screen tribute helps keep the legend alive but is itself all too easily forgotten. ABC, Saturday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Sunday night at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Produced by ITV Studios, Shaw Media, Deep Indigo Productions, Lookout Point, Sienna Films and Mid Atlantic Films. Created by Nigel Stafford-Clark; written by Julian Fellowes; directed by Jon Jones; Simon Vaughan, Kate Bartlett, Jennifer Kawaja, Julia Sereny, Howard Ellis, Adam Goodman and David Collins, executive producers; Mr. Stafford-Clark and Chris Thompson, producers. WITH: Linus Roache (Earl of Manton), Geraldine Somerville (Louisa, Countess of Manton), Perdita Weeks (Lady Georgiana Grex), Lyndsey Marshal (Watson), Lee Ross (Barnes), Glen Blackhall (Paolo Sandrini), Antonio Magro (Mario Sandrini), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Annie Desmond), David Calder (Captain Smith), Steven Waddington (Second Officer Lightoller), Brian McCardie (First Officer Murdoch), Toby Jones (John Batley), Maria Doyle Kennedy (Muriel Batley), Dragos Bucur (Peter Lubov), Peter McDonald (Jim McDonald), Ruth Bradley (Mary Maloney), Georgia McCutcheon (Theresa Maloney), Stephen Campbell Moore (Thomas Andrews), James Wilby (Bruce Ismay), Noah Reid (Harry Widener), Diana Kent (Eleanor Widener), Celia Imrie (Grace Rushton), Simon Paisley Day (Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon), Linda Kash (Molly Brown), David Eisner (Benjamin Guggenheim), Sophie Winkleman (Dorothy Gibson), Mark Lewis Jones (David Evans), Sylvestra Le Touzel (Lady Duff Gordon) and Josephine de la Baume (Madame Aubart).