The fault, dear reader, lies not with the stars, but with the script.

Tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC, the miniseries “Empire” begins its five-week run, hidden away from view in the dog days of summer so that no one will notice it. The current ABC management has dumped it here, presumably because it had nothing to do with it. A past administration authorized this lavish Roman extravaganza in the wake of “Gladiator,” and, inexplicably, commissioned the men behind “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” the wonderful Judy Davis vehicle of a few years back, to put it together. The result is neither regrettable nor commendable; mostly, it’s forgettable.

I’m always fond of period movies with convoluted stories of intrigue and betrayal – and no one could dispute the superior twists of the saga of the Roman Empire in the years following the death of Julius Caesar. However, there’s also the unfortunate precedent of Shakespeare to stand in the way of later efforts; something about the Bard’s storytelling skills makes all subsequent scripts read a little less than literary. The script for “Empire” reaches for poetry and falls painfully short, with dialogue we’ve heard a thousand times before. “I don’t know what to say,” mumbles the warrior Tyrannus when asked by Caesar to be his bodyguard. “Say yes,” Caesar replies. Hard to imagine Shakespeare writing that.

The basic story of “Empire” follows the fictitious tale of a young warrior (Tyrannus), who aligns himself with Caesar until rivals Cassius and Brutus manipulate him out of the leader’s orbit. Yes, Brutus has Caesar killed in this version, too – but as he is about to die, Caesar swears Tyrannus to ensure the longevity of Octavius as the eventual heir to the dead conqueror. It’s “Gladiator” meets “Julius Caesar,” with a smidgen of “Band of Brothers” thrown in – yet another DVD-ready project that doesn’t require an approving audience, or the approbation of critics. With “stars” like Jonathan Cake and Santiago Cabrera in the leading roles, ABC saved a bundle and will no doubt turn a profit on “Empire” despite its mediocre pedigree and summer time slot. Eventually, like movies, TV shows will go straight to DVD, and we’ll all be spared the annoyance of having to actually watch all this mediocre fare. If you’re smart, you’ll save your energies for “Rome,” the HBO series set for fall. Whatever that turns out to be, it’s safe to assume it’s worth watching. If you watch one series set in ancient Rome this year, don’t make it “Empire.”

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How can any self-respecting critic leap to Tom Cruise’s defense in the wake of the Matt Lauer “Today” show interviews last Friday and Monday? What New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley referred to on Saturday as Mr. Lauer’s “lucky” interview was, in fact, one of the most confident and assured conversations by a TV correspondent with a Hollywood superstar in years. Faced with Mr. Cruise’s repeated, rude insinuations (which Ms. Stanley found “enjoyably bracing and bold”) that he knew more than Mr. Lauer did about psychiatry and drugs, the NBC correspondent unflappably stayed on point. Morning show hosts may be “facile and heavily scripted,” as Ms. Stanley writes, but in this case Mr. Lauer improvised (not “sputtered,” as Ms. Stanley inaccurately reported) his responses to Mr. Cruise’s Dianetic diatribe with calm precision. “I’m not prescribing Ritalin, Tom,” Mr. Lauer correctly pointed out to Mr. Cruise, who was attempting to portray the host (“Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt …” Mr. Cruise condescendingly kept saying) as an ignorant dilettante. “And I’m not asking anyone else to do it. I’m simply saying I know some people who seem to have been helped by it.” When the bullying actor challenged Mr. Lauer’s right to say that without becoming a Ritalin advocate, Mr. Lauer calmly countered: “But now you’re telling me that your experiences with the people I know, which are zero, are more important than my experiences.”

Mr. Cruise seemed a bit stymied by that remark, as well he should have been. His attempt to paint Mr. Lauer as less knowledgeable than he was, in and of itself, a vivid illustration of the actor’s lack of knowledge. He may know something about psychiatry and drugs, but how does he know anything about Mr. Lauer and those people who Mr. Lauer believes have been helped by Ritalin? Mr. Cruise’s use of television to propagate his all-or-nothing theories about psycho-pharmaceuticals is perhaps, as Ms. Stanley suggests, fun to watch. But his use of his star power to belittle the opinions and intelligence of fellow human beings like Brooke Shields – and, now, Matt Lauer – would seem to go against the beliefs of any sensible religion, including Scientology. Mr. Cruise should be ashamed of himself, and Mr. Lauer proud of standing firm in the face of all that star wattage. Would Diane Sawyer have done the same, or would she have crumbled in the face of all those bulging muscles and white teeth? Mr. Lauer’s Friday performance is reason enough to stay loyal to the “Today” show.

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The good folks at HBO have alerted me to the fact that “The Comeback” did not get “uniformly bad reviews,” as I reported incorrectly last week. It turns out several critics liked it, including those from the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. Well, at least my negative opinion of “The Comeback” gibes with that of star Lisa Kudrow’s own son; the actress reported on NPR’s “Fresh Air” last week that his response to her new series was, “I didn’t need to see that!”