Like his late father, who turned the mob into a political cause, accused racketeer Chris Colombo knows how to make the best of a bad situation.

Since being placed under “house arrest” last year, Mr. Colombo, son of Mafia boss Joe Colombo, has enjoyed the comfort of his luxurious home in New York’s Orange County, dined in fine restaurants, played cards with his buddies, gone to his therapist, and even visited a nearby topless joint – all in compliance with his court-ordered home confinement.

The best part? He’s getting paid for it.

The burly 44-year-old scion of the legendary New York godfather will make his television debut Thanksgiving night in an HBO special appropriately titled “House Arrest,” Gang Land has learned.

Mr. Colombo, who wears an ankle bracelet monitor under modified home-confinement provisions, is the unquestioned star of a half-hour comedy show that is based on his not-so-funny predicament as a defendant facing up to 20 years in prison.

An alleged mob associate in the crew of his brother, Anthony, 60, himself a reputed crime family soldier, Mr. Colombo is charged with gambling, loan-sharking, and extortion. He spent two weeks in a federal lockup and then was released under strict “house arrest” conditions similar to those in place for another mob prince, John “Junior” Gotti.

After five months, his lawyer at the time, Valerie Amsterdam, who has a few scenes in the HBO show, won him much less restrictive conditions under which he’s allowed out of the house from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. That deal enabled him to headline the upcoming TV special.

The show is the brainchild of Chris Gambale, an independent producer who wrote and directed a full-length movie spoof of “The Godfather” as his School of Visual Arts thesis film. In it, Mr. Colombo starred as a maniacal mob boss, Don John Testosteroni.

“House Arrest” – HBO calls it a “docu-comedy based on reality” – won’t be confused with “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” HBO’s comedy that stars Larry David playing himself. But the show does employ many of Mr. David’s award-winning techniques, and Mr. Colombo pulls them off pretty well, Gang Land observed during a sneak peek the other day.

The balding Mr. Colombo uses self-deprecating humor as he travels through a concocted day in his life along with an assortment of real-life and made-up characters whose purpose is to trigger humorous remarks by the usually gregarious bundle of energy.

“I always try to look for the good side of things, the funny side,” Mr. Colombo told Gang Land. “I’m like a human antidepressant, always have been.”

From 6:30 a.m., when he introduces himself and his ankle bracelet while clad in a white bathrobe, until the closing 1 a.m. scene, when his card-playing buddies sing a “Happy House Arrest” toast to him, Mr. Colombo pokes fun at himself and his situation.

His home’s grounds, a 9-acre plot in Blooming Grove with ducks, chickens, goats, pheasants, peacocks, dogs, and a horse, is like the Ponderosa, the ranch in “Bonanza,” a 1960s TV Western featuring a widowed father and his three sons. “But I can’t figure out which brother I am,” Mr. Colombo said. (Gang Land votes for Hoss; he’s definitely not Little Joe.)

On a trip to his friend Rocco’s restaurant, his pal doesn’t show because he’s had a bad hair transplant. But the restaurateur talks about it in a phone call to Mr. Colombo, whose own hair transplant procedure is a smashing success, or so he thinks.

“How do I feel?” Mr. Colombo asks. “I’ve got a bracelet on my leg, I’ve got a guy filming the top of my head … and I’m about to go to the Blue Moon,” a strip joint that he says is “known for the ugliest girls in the world.”

The action at the topless club is relatively tame. Near the end of the show, however, Mr. Colombo gets two women to bare their breasts in a brief, tasteless scene that seems designed to permit HBO to note that the show contains frontal nudity.

After the Blue Moon, Mr. Colombo decides to confess his sins, but all the churches they visit are locked. As his driver, played by another restaurant owner buddy, tries to use a credit card to open one door, Mr. Colombo deadpans: “This could be a violation of my bail restrictions.”

Along the way, he gets serious when talking about his father, praising him as a champion of the little guy who was gunned down at an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally in Columbus Circle in 1971.

With glowing pride, he identifies scrapbook pictures of celebrities and politicians who supported his father’s brief foray into the civil rights arena, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Governor Rockefeller.

For the most part, though, Mr. Colombo takes viewers on a guided tour of a wacky world.

When a receptionist wants to wager $500 that she’ll complete a breast cancer walk, he proposes a “pinky finger” bet because his bail restrictions prohibit him from gambling. “Watch out,” he says as they each extend their pinkies, “I pick my nose with that finger.”

He buys a pinstripe suit that makes him look like a caricature of a wiseguy; he omits listing some sins during his 1149 1158 1280 1169confession because it could mean trouble if the feds are listening; he gets stuck in a traffic jam in the theater district, supposedly a few minutes before a midnight curfew.

All of Mr. Colombo’s work in the film, lawyer Jeremy Schneider told Gang Land, was performed “within the restrictions of his curfew and the geographical limitations of his bail restrictions.” Mr. Schneider declined to comment on the racketeering charges. The trial is slated to take place before Manhattan federal Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald next year.

Neither Mr. Colombo nor his lawyer would speculate on the reactions that brother Anthony, other co-defendants, and family members – both blood relatives and the other kind – might have when they learn about Mr. Colombo’s new venture.

Their views will likely be much different from the rave reviews that a gaggle of Colombo mobsters, relatives, and friends gave him for his efforts in 1989 as the star of “Godfather III: The Unauthorized Sequel.”

In fact, Mr. Colombo seemed to forecast their opinions in a “House Arrest” segment in which he visits his Reiki therapist to relieve a stress buildup. Reiki therapists, for those of you scratching your heads, are hands-on practitioners who infuse healing energy into their patients by placing their hands on various parts of the client’s body – from the head to the feet – for about five minutes at a time. Really.

After noting that his therapist is a “better medium than a psychic” and that he regularly communicates with his father through her, Mr. Colombo asks whether his father is “happy about this HBO thing.”

“Yes and no,” she says.

“What’s the ‘no’ part?”

“It’ll cause some family conflict.”

“Everything in my family causes conflicts,” he replies. “My family has issues. They love issues. They’re not happy unless they’re unhappy. They’re just mad at me because I’m never unhappy.”

Ever the optimist, Mr. Colombo eyes “House Arrest” as a possible steppingstone; that is, once these silly federal charges are out of the way.

“I always wanted to host ‘Saturday Night Live’ and play my father in a movie about his life,” he told Gang Land.

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.