Is that British bulldog of an actor, Bob Hoskins, trying to take over American TV?

Best known as a film actor his credits include "The Long Good Friday," "Mona Lisa," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "Hook," "Super Mario Bros." and "Nixon" Hoskins will be seen in three TV projects in the next three weeks this side of the transatlantic drink.

This Sunday at 8 p.m., he plays former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in the Showtime biopic "Noriega: God's Favorite." Next Sunday, he plays Sancho Panza to John Lithgow s Don Quixote in TNT s "Don Quixote." And on April 16, he plays Mr. Micawber in a "Masterpiece Theatre" production of "David Copperfield."

"Iss good, innit. Iss great, really," says Hoskins, speaking on the phone from his London home in his best Cockney, referring to the spate of TV work.

But, no, he's not planning a full-scale assault on American TV.

"You know, I just do what appeals to me," he says. "Three tellies (TV films) happened to come up, and I took them."

Now 57, Hoskins has made more than 50 films and is readily recognizable to audiences on screens around the world. Yet he says his devotion is to the characters that he plays, not to the fame that acting might bring.

"The point is, whether the character is Noriega or MacBeth, I just play the part," he says. "I'm much more interested in the job than with the periphery of the job. Some actors seem to do the job as an excuse to get to the periphery. D'ja know what I mean?"

Stardom?

"Thass right."

In the case of "Noriega: God's Favorite," how many actors would have agreed to do the role if it was pitched to them the way director Roger Spottiswoode ("Tomorrow Never Dies") pitched it to Hoskins?

"We went and had lunch together," says Hoskins, "and he says to me, You're the only actor in the world to play this short, fat, ugly megalomaniac. I wasn't insulted at all. I realized halfway through the lunch that Roger is totally insane, and I have always found insanity totally attractive. He's crazy but brilliant. In fact, that's probably what makes him brilliant. From the moment we met, we got on very, very well."

"Noriega," which co-stars Richard Masur, Jeffrey DeMunn and Tony Plana, is the latest addition to Hoskins ever-growing role call of historical characters. He has played Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini and J. Edgar Hoover, among others, and is currently filming the theatrical film "Enemy at the Gate," in which he plays Nikita Khruschev.

"I like playing historical characters," he says, "because of the research. That's one of the perks of the job. You've got to study history. Like with Noriega, I studied the history of the Panama Canal, and it was fascinating. Being an actor, you get a continual education."

But no matter the historical character, Hoskins insists on a shaded portrait.

"If I was going to play Adolf Eichmann, for instance, who murdered millions and millions of people, I'd also have to portray the fact that he was a very sentimental man who would bring his wife flowers every night," he says.

In fact, he prefers villains, he says.

"Usually, good guys can be boring," he says. "So even if I m playing (sympathetic) characters like Sancho Panza or Micawber, I'll go out of my way to pick my nose or something."

But no matter who he plays, he does not subscribe to the practice fashionable among certain Methody actors of letting a character inhabit him to the extent that he continues to live the role when the project is over.

"When I m finished, I just walk away," he says. "I've got a wife and kids. I can't be taking home some of these (evil) characters I've played."

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