Lifetime's 'Whitney' a tough sell in digital age

* WHITNEY. 8 p.m. Saturday,

Lifetime.

PITY THE "biopic" filmmaker. Any time there's a story to be told "based on actual events," there inevitably will be comparisons to the real thing.

This winter, some of the most-buzzed-about Oscar contenders feature biographies and, we hope, the true story. From "The Imitation Game" and "The Theory of Everything" to "Wild" and "Unbroken," the challenge is to focus on what's real while making it entertaining.

With the exception of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ("Selma"), however, the subjects of these films are relatively unknown. They weren't often - if at all - on television, videotaped or plastered across YouTube.

To that end, director Angela Bassett has her hands full with "Whitney." The Lifetime movie debuts this weekend, and it arrives bearing a whiff of disapproval from the late R&B/pop star's family. They were not involved in the project nor did any members attend a premiere last week at the Paley Center for Media, in Los Angeles.

"Whitney" presents a five-year period in Ms. Houston's life. Anyone expecting a depiction of her 2012 accidental death by drowning in a hotel tub will be disappointed.

Bassett told Daily News TV critic Ellen Gray this week that she hopes the focus on Whitney's years with Bobby Brown will help humanize her.

Bassett also noted, in a recent interview with the Madame Noire website, "We know how the story ends. And we don't need to see that."

Instead, this is the tale of a mega-talent (a radiant Yaya DaCosta) whose longtime drug abuse would speed her descent from the top of the entertainment world - seven consecutive No. 1 songs - to clip staple on "The Soup."

Although there are many hits played throughout "Whitney," the singing is by Houston's friend, Deborah Cox. Executive producer Larry Sanitsky told media recently, "It was never the intention to lip synch to records but rather to use a full emotional performance."

Were "Whitney" a TV movie about a fictional character and her travails, it might play pretty well. But this isn't fiction. The Browns made their public life even more public by appearing in a 2005 reality series on Bravo, "Being Bobby Brown."

Then Whitney's brother and other family members agreed to their own 2012 series, "The Houstons: On Our Own," which ran on Lifetime. With so much of this family's lives on display, including that of the couple's only child, Bobbi Kristina, it's hard to really buy into the story writer Shem Bitterman is selling.