New York ? “Our Fathers” confronts a subject that seems all too ripe for exploitation: sexually abusive priests in the Catholic Church.

But while dramatizing the tragedy, this Showtime film avoids the pitfalls of melodrama. It focuses not on the squalid crimes, but on their disastrous effect – as well as on the courage of the victims who spoke up. “Our Fathers” premieres at 7 p.m. today.

Reflectively, somberly, the story unfolds: In early 2002, the Boston Globe exposed Father John J. Geoghan as well as Cardinal Bernard Law, who not only failed to stop years of sexual abuse by Geoghan and other Boston clergy, but tried to hide it.

Contacted initially by just a handful of victims (abused boys now grown to troubled, shame-filled adulthood), attorney Mitchell Garabedian took on the archdiocese. The church’s response, even in the face of damning evidence of abuse that spanned decades, was disavowal and further cover-up.

“John Geoghan’s transgressions were not the fault of a caring church,” Law declares in a sermon in the film, “but the aberrant act of one depraved man.”

Actors Brian Dennehy, left, as Father Spagnolia, Christopher Plummer, center, as Cardinal Law, and Ted Danson as Mitchell Garabedian, star in Showtime's Our

Even so, in December 2002, Law resigned under pressure as archbishop of Boston and was forced to give depositions that helped pave the way to a settlement between the archdiocese and Garabedian’s clients: $10 million awarded to more than 86 plaintiffs. (In all, the archdiocese of Boston has paid out nearly $100 million in settlements to some 600 victims.)

But how much corrective action has the church really taken? Disapproving parishioners asked this question last month as Law (who after leaving Boston in disgrace was granted a ceremonial but highly visible appointment in Rome) led a Mass for thousands mourning Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica.

“Our Fathers” points to no clear-cut victory. The film’s conclusion seems to mark no more than a beginning for reform.

Directed by Dan Curtis (“War and Remembrance”), the film stars Ted Danson as Garabedian and Christopher Plummer as Law. Brian Dennehy is outspoken Father Dominic Spagnolia, who boldly condemns the abuse and systematic cover-up from his pulpit (“This is not a Cardinal! This is a Nixon!”), but is eventually driven from the church.

The screenplay by Thomas Michael Donnelly is based on “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal,” the book France wrote after reporting on the scandal for Newsweek.