Back in 1968, ABC was in the dumps – so much so it could’ve been classified as the dump itself. It had none of the big news names and popular television shows (cue clips of "The Flying Nun"). Sets were collapsing – in the case of their convention set, for the better. As one talking head notes in Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s briskly amusing new doc "Best of Enemies," the network would’ve finished in fourth, but there were only three channels. It’s enough to make the days of "Cavemen" look downright prestigious.

With the political conventions coming up, the increasingly desperate network threw up a Hail Mary. Instead of going with wall-to-wall convention coverage, it slapped together the brashly conservative William F. Buckley and the equally boisterous liberal Gore Vidal for a series of televised debates. Like most trainwrecks, the resulting collision made for great eye-catching entertainment, watching the two esteemed intellectuals purr venom at one another, slyly – and then not so slyly – hoping to draw blood.

As for actual substantive political discourse, however, the debates were abysmal, a lot of enlightened sounding and clearly articulated nothing, moving more and more away from the conventions they were hired to discuss.

But who cares of the issues when the ratings are good? And they were. Politics have never been completely sacred ground, but if you hate its current loud, garish and combative state, the Buckley-Vidal debates served as the first mushroom cloud on the horizon, signaling the dawn of the punditry apocalypse.

In some way, "Best of Enemies" plays a little similarly to the debates it’s chronicling. It’s a little scanty on substantial depth; much like race and gender in Neville’s prevous doc, the Oscar-winning "20 Feet from Stardom," it tends to edge up against its deeper ideas before quickly scampering away. The grim effects of the debates on modern politics, for instance, are oddly saved exclusively as a brief epilogue at the very end of the film, spliced in over the end credits as though it was remembered at just the last minute.

Also much like the debates themselves – which, judging from the plentiful archival footage on display here, struggled to keep its players on point, properly framed and clearly audible amidst the bickering – the doc plays a little rickety and unfocused. Neville and Gordon struggle getting the right editing rhythm to the picture, resulting in spots of dead space and some scattered storytelling, jumping from the past to the debates then back to the past for some more backstory again.

The biggest similarity "Best of Enemies" shares with its subject, however, is that despite its shortcomings, it’s still bitingly entertaining and engaging. Neville may not be a great storyteller, but he knows how to spot great stories – especially those faded and forgotten from pop culture history – with electric archival material. That was the case with the background singers in "20 Feet from Stardom," and that’s the case here with Vidal v Buckley.

Neville and Gordon collect plenty of funny and insightful interviews from biographers and TV historians – including Dick Cavett, who hilariously breaks the stunned silence after Buckley’s live self-combustion – and assemble them in brisk fashion. The film stylistically may lean more toward a conventional talking head doc, but it’s at least done well, setting up Vidal and Buckley’s battle of ideals with flash and humor.

The main event, however, is, well, the main event: Gore Vidal versus William Buckley. For the most part, Neville and Gordon smartly let the debates speak for themselves, playing the archival footage in extended chunks and watching the arsenic-lacquered snipers in suits have at it. As one interviewee notes, "Debate is sugar, and we’re flies," and "Best of Enemies" proves that point mightily.

It’s no wonder the debates became a ratings hit; the two men were strong personalities whose high-postured drawls and nimbly witty wordplay still easily trick the brain into thinking their off-topic bullying crusades were sophisticated scholarly sparring matches – even when the scene before has a talking head noting both men’s goals were to unapologetically tear the other to the ground with all the world watching.

The façade almost works until the climactic ninth debate, when Vidal tempted Buckley with a "crypto-Nazi" jab, Buckley retorted with calling his co-star a "queer" and a threat to sock him in the face, and the curtain of civility collapsed like one of ABC’s sets. Neville and Gordon effectively stage the escalating debates almost like the "Paranormal Activity" movies set up the nighttime scares, flashing the debate "rounds" on screen and letting the footage simmer and boil until it goes over the edge. It’s a sneakily tense and smart display of buildup and pop.

In the aftermath, "Best of Enemies" takes an interesting shift in tone, the light and playful air from before turning downcast and introspective. The spotlight goes personal, honing in tighter on its two dueling stars’ damaged psyches. The usually composed Buckley is haunted by vulgarly snapping on such a massive stage, while Vidal’s victory is short-lived as he and his once testy controversial works fade into history.

It’s an odd choice to shortchange the larger ramifications, politically and socially, the debates had, but even so, "Best of Enemies" still tells a snappy and sad story of a war of words that morphed into a quagmire, fought by two broken men who probably did more harm than good to the nation they both felt tasked to protect.