One is a docudrama, so you don't know where truth ends and fiction begins. The other involves access inside a totalitarian country, so you can't be sure whether the words and pictures are staged propaganda or a glimpse of truth rarely seen.

And, yet, despite the major concerns they raise, I enthusiastically recommend Live from Baghdad, an HBO film dramatizing CNN's behind-enemy-lines coverage of the Gulf War, and MSNBC's Back to Baghdad, a National Geographic Explorer report on life in Iraq today from Peter Arnett, one of the CNN correspondents who made history with their live reporting from the Al-Rashid Hotel in 1991 when U.S. warplanes attacked Iraq.

Live from Baghdad, which premieres tonight at 8 on HBO, is a splendid film. As entertainment, it offers more than anyone has a right to expect without paying $8 for a ticket to sit in a theater in front of a big screen. Script, editing and direction create an irresistible urgency in the storytelling.

And, ultimately, the story is not what you remember. It's the performances of Michael Keaton, Helena Bonham Carter and David Suchet. Is there any channel or network but HBO that could bring this much talent to one made-for-TV movie?

Keaton plays Robert Weiner, the CNN senior producer who arrived in Baghdad in 1990, several months before the start of the Gulf War, to head up its coverage of Iraq's response to a mounting tension between President George Bush and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The drums of war were starting to sound, and CNN sent Weiner and producer Ingrid Formanek (Carter) to make sure its 24/7 coverage didn't miss a beat.

Based on Weiner's book Live from Baghdad: Gathering News at Ground Zero, the film tells the story of Weiner, Formanek and the correspondents and crew members who helped CNN scoop the world on Jan. 16, 1991, the night American bombs started falling on Baghdad. In terms of broadcasting history, this is a powerful story of a 10-year-old cable news operation, with an eccentric owner in Ted Turner and not much credibility, rising to the moment to deliver broadcast journalism on a par with Edward R. Murrow's rooftop radio reports from London as Nazi bombs fell during World War II.

Is Weiner's account of this history self-serving in the film that he co-authored? Well, he is the star, the straw that stirs the drink in almost every scene. All drama revolves around him from the very start as he shamelessly campaigns within CNN for the Baghdad assignment while several executives voice their reservations.

As portrayed by Keaton, Weiner is a bit of a hot dog, a cowboy, long on nerve but considered short on judgment by some of his bosses. And so, as he arrives in Baghdad, he brings the drama with him.

Watch Keaton in his first moment on screen as he walks through the CNN newsroom and then as he arrives at the airport in Baghdad. The energy he projects is dazzling. He does it with his hands, the jerky movement of his head. Even his eyebrows are working overtime to give the impression of a guy whose heart beats a little faster than anyone else's. Keaton's Weiner is all nerves and edge - and it drives the film.

The power of Bonham-Carter's performance is in creating a persona for her character so large that it is able to center Weiner when he is in her presence. The scenes with Weiner and Formanek alone - usually late at night in a hotel bar with lots of booze - are islands of calm in the otherwise raging river of a plot.

And, yet, the finest performance is that of Suchet, who plays a high-ranking Iraqi official with whom Weiner manages to form a friendship. Through this character - and Suchet's nuanced depiction of his intelligence and sensibility - for the first time I felt as if I saw the world through Iraqi eyes.

That is no small accomplishment on the part of HBO, given the relentlessly one-dimensional depersonalization of Iraq that takes place in most other places on American television where pictures of Hussein in silly-looking hats shooting off shotguns seem to play in an endless loop.

At the start of his National Geographic Report that airs Sunday night at 8 on MSNBC, Arnett says he too is trying to put a human face on Iraq.

"I think it is important to know that when we drop bombs on these distant locations, you know, there is real living flesh there," Arnett says in the report. "That is not to say we should not go to war with some countries, but there are human beings there. And let's think about that."

Arnett's hourlong report does capture voices and show images not seen elsewhere on American television - from a young girl rehearsing an anti-American speech in a bomb shelter where Iraqi women and children were killed by U.S. bombs in 1991 to a relatively well-stocked Baghdad marketplace and a U.N. food distribution center that seems quite successful.

But, by the time we get to Arnett's interview with Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, you start to wonder how much of this is being staged by Hussein's regime for Arnett - and how far Arnett is willing to play along to maintain his insider status.

The setup at the very start of the report, after all, has a narrator saying, "Today, more than a decade later [since Arnett's coverage of the Gulf War], the U.S. and Baghdad are again on the brink of war, and Peter Arnett plans to be there if it happens."

He can't be there if the Iraqis don't let him.

Taken together, the HBO film and the National Geographic Special make for an almost surreal cable television viewing experience this weekend. In the Saturday night movie, there's Bruce McGill playing Peter Arnett with a swagger. In the Sunday night report on MSNBC, there's Arnett himself walking the streets of Baghdad today with only a little less bounce in his purposeful step.

I enjoyed and even feel as if I learned something about Iraq from both productions. Yet, indicative of their limitations and the wariness with which they should be taken, neither mentions Arnett's forced resignation from CNN in 1999 over his involvement in a 1998 CNN report titled Operation Tailwind. Arnett's narration in the report claimed that the U.S. military used deadly sarin gas on its own soldiers in Laos in 1970. CNN retracted the report under fire from the Pentagon after it aired.

I admire Arnett and think his reporting in Iraq should be celebrated as it is in both pieces. But don't be fooled into thinking what you are seeing is the truth and nothing but the whole truth, either.