Los Angeles ? Books about television emerge with the regularity of commercial breaks and knockoffs of “The Osbournes.”

Just as most of what TV offers is instantly forgettable, so are many of the volumes it inspires. It’s 1998 and “Dawson’s Creek” is hot? Rush out “Dawson’s Creek: The Official Scrapbook.”

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, left, and his wife, Jessica, sit next to former basketball star Magic Johnson as they watch the New York Knicks play the Miami Heat at Madison Square Garden in New York, in this Feb. 20, 2001, file photo. Seinfeld is the subject of a new biography, Seinfeld:

Sarah Michelle Gellar is the cutie pie du jour? Let her star in her very own fluffy biography. Or two or three.

There are more ambitious works, as a pair of newcomers demonstrate with very different results. One, a biography about the biggest sitcom star of the last decade, turns out to be a dull read. The other, which gets into the ring with Vince McMahon and his World Wrestling Federation, is both smart and lively.

“Seinfeld: The Making of An American Icon” by Jerry Oppenheimer (HarperCollins Publishing, 360 pages, $29.95) comes bearing a grand title. But the unauthorized biography has a fatal flaw: Seinfeld appears too lightweight to carry a book with such serious intentions.

A relatively uneventful childhood, relatively smooth road to success and eight years on a TV sitcom about nothing do not make for gripping drama. While “Seinfeld” boasts scrupulously footnoted detail, there is no there there when it comes to its subject or at least Oppenheimer failed to find it.

No skeletons here

Any dark well of neuroses Seinfeld might draw from (as is the case with most successful comics) isn’t revealed here. Colleagues, relatives and friends recall him as an ambitious, sometimes prickly man who played it safe in his career and his comedy.

“If anyone asked me back then who was going to be a major superstar, Jerry Seinfeld’s name wouldn’t have come to mind,” one comic says. “He just didn’t have the demeanor, the personality; he wasn’t forceful, he wasn’t powerful, wasn’t bigger than life.”

The book fails to satisfyingly explore the intriguing elements of Seinfeld’s life, whether the comedy club scene, big-money network television or the intricate psychology of comedy.

Instead, we learn that Jerry’s addiction to sneakers started in childhood, that he was a high school nerd and that he likes big-busted, dark-haired women, preferably Jewish (which is about as far as his religious devotion goes, according to the book).

Some aspects might make for a fun, mildly salacious trip, and Oppenheimer has the reputation of writing, as a reviewer once put it, “mean-spirited, thoroughly researched” bios, among them the Martha Stewart saga “Just Desserts.”

But the juicy bits in Seinfeld’s life aren’t squeezed for what they’re worth. So Jerry dated foxy teenager Shoshanna Lonstein; we knew that. So Jessica Sklar skipped out her short-lived marriage to romance and later wed Seinfeld; knew that. When the book needs to dish, it pulls back.

Wrestling riveting

“Sex, Lies and Headlocks,” subtitled “The Real Story of Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation” (Crown Publishers, 255 pages, $24), doesn’t attempt to make McMahon, outrageous as he is, carry the load solo.

The book by Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham places the now-titled World Wrestling Entertainment owner firmly within the hyper-sleazy world of professional wrestling riddled by violence both fake and tragically real and drugs.

McMahon, who followed in his dad’s footsteps and involved his own wife and children into this unconventional family trade, is described early on an ambitious schemer with “bullets in his eyes.”

One vivid passage details an on-air interview McMahon conducted with the widow of wrestler Brian Pillman just 48 hours after his death in a hotel room.

After asking Melanie Pillman whether pain medication may have played a part in her husband’s heart attack, McMahon went for the big finish: “Have you had a chance to think about what you as a single parent will do to support five children?”

What a guy. And what a business he’s in.

As “Sex, Lies and Headlocks” tracks the path of pro wrestling from road companies in the 1940s to a high-flying TV staple dominated by McMahon, it keeps its eye on financial machinations and the bottom line.

Too bad “Seinfeld” couldn’t muster the same substance, or at least the flash.