As "To Be the Best" glitters past us, we suspect we've met these people before.

They live well and dress better. Their lives unfold in tall buildings, each in a different country.

The CBS mini-series premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on WBBM-Channel 2, going head-on with the Olympics on NBC.

It seems to have the characters who have populated so many high-glitz minis and series. Even some of the actors - Lindsay Wagner, former "Dynasty" stars Stephanie Beacham and Christopher Cazenove - are the same.

The stories may seem identical, but the people who write them aren't. What makes Barbara Taylor Bradford - the "To Be the Best" author - successful?

"I'm told by people that I tell a good story and I tell it in an interesting place," Bradford says.

As it happens, Bradford has been to those places and met those people.

"Of course, I'm an overnight success," she says, "but it took me 30 years to get there."

That was the time between selling her first piece to a hometown newspaper (for three shillings and six pence, which was roughly $1.85) and finishing her first novel, at 42.

"I started four novels," Bradford says, "but I never finished them. I'd get to Page 195 or 200 and realize they weren't right."

That changed, a decade ago. "I was working on yet another novel that I wasn't going to finish. Then I just stopped and spent a day asking myself: `What kind of book do you really want to do?' "

Her answer: "I wanted to write an old-fashioned English saga."

This would be an epic, the kind of story that sweeps across a lifetime.

"A Woman of Substance" watched young Emma Harte build an empire of glossy department stores.

It sold 14 million copies and gave Bradford her favorite character. "I wish I'd never knocked Emma off."

There were two sequels, giving the empire to Emma's granddaughter, Paula. Other novels have been sandwiched between, but the "Substance" trilogy is what brought Bradford to TV.

In the first mini-series, Deborah Kerr was the older Emma and Jenny Seagrove was the young one. In "Hold the Dream," Seagrove was back as Paula.

Now comes "To Be the Best," the first done with a U.S. network.

Yes, Bradford says, that makes a difference. "They wanted to be sure there would be some names that were familiar to their audience."

So Seagrove was out and Wagner was in. The "Dynasty" people were there; so was Anthony Hopkins.

That's the same Hopkins who has an Academy Award and general esteem. He plays security chief Jack Figg.

The book had major plot twists in Australia, which would have stretched the travel budget too far. So the script lumped most of them into London and Hong Kong.

Some novelists would howl at such changes. Bradford is tolerant, however, because she: Had her own chance once, writing the "Hold the Dream" script. "That was my first script ever - and my last." Is married to the mini's producer, Robert Bradford. Understands the importance of a balanced budget.

In short, Bradford - like the strong-hearted Emma Harte - has gone far.

She grew up in Yorkshire in a working-class setting.

Her mother, a nurse and nanny, had a quick impact.

"My mother was a voracious reader," Bradford says. "She force-fed all this to me. I was exposed to all the things that she loved - books, art and theater."

Soon, Barbara Taylor was doing her own writing. At 16, she was editing the feature section of her local newspaper; at 20, she was ready for magazines and London.

"I suppose I was scared," she says, "but fools rush in where angels fear to tread . . . I was very career-oriented and intensely interested in my work."