Just a theory, but maybe any given portrait of Abraham Lincoln reflects at least as much on the person assembling it as it does on Lincoln himself.

C.A. Tripp's controversial biography The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln argued, principally, that the man who freed the slaves was gay. Doris Kearns Goodwin's current best-seller A Team of Rivals focuses, in a time of political division, on Lincoln's acute ability to diplomatically unite men of wildly differing political sensibilities. The approaches suggest the authors' agendas.

So what to make of Vikram Jayanti, director/producer of the History Channel's new documentary, ''Lincoln,'' which dwells almost morbidly on the president's severe depression? Should we worry for him? Should we lock him in a sanatorium and take away his belt and shoestrings?

Jayanti, who worked in production capacities on the Oscar-winning documentaries ''When We Were Kings'' and ''Born Into Brothels,'' gets his experts to dwell almost exclusively on Lincoln's abject state of mind at any given time, almost to the exclusion of his accomplishments. ''Lincoln'' immerses itself more in his bullying father, the early death of a childhood sweetheart, his troubled marriage and a poem he writes about suicide than it does in the Emancipation Proclamation. Only the final, third hour of the film dwells on his presidency, and even that devotes almost 10 minutes to the devastating death of his son Willie.

The film opens with an account of Lincoln's premonition that he would die in office and, as the otherwise fairly chronological film relates his life story, returns repeatedly to the otherwise uneventful final day of his life. One supposes that there are so many Lincoln biographies out there that this is a new, if melodramatic, way of approaching things, but it makes for an awfully one-sided, disjointed enterprise.

Here's a sampling of the comments Jayanti gets from his assortment of historians and experts:

''Lincoln's eyes always seemed fixed on the future, and the future always seemed terrible.''

''I don't think Lincoln could've been the president he was without going through the dark night of the soul.''

Even his keen mind is taken to task: ''Intelligence can wreak havoc with the mind.''

''You begin to feel you can't focus - your hearing is going, your vision is narrowing, your whole physical self is caving in - as if the solid flesh is melting away, and that's where you feel, 'I have to kill myself.' ''

What is this, a Lincoln bio or an episode of ''Oprah''?

Even Lincoln's final night on the town takes on ominous overtones: ''Was it an act of a man who somehow felt he was hurtling toward his destiny?'' Perhaps the intent is to humanize Lincoln, but the effect tends to be a tabloidization of the man -- his wit, for one, is almost eradicated. Nonetheless, the facts of his extraordinary life ensures this remains absorbing viewing.

And, please, stop with the cheesy period re-enactments. ''Lincoln'' boasts swirling shots of clamoring constituents and wartime ballgoers and, particularly amusingly, blandly lurid shots of women of ill repute. These things invariably feel utterly inauthentic.

Honest Abe

The new documentry "Lincoln" airs tonight at 6 (repeats at 10) on the History Channel.

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