By WALTER GOODMAN

If that's Michael Moore coming at you, beware. Once the man gets his prey in his lens, there's no shaking him off. As confirmed by ''The Awful Truth,'' his new series of half-hour agitations, he is insistent, persistent and far beyond embarrassment.

If you try to hold a reasoned conversation with him, you become a foil for rude, crude questions delivered with a straight face and malice aforethought. (''Henry Hyde is an adulterer, right?'') If you try to sneak away, his camera lingers, a weapon of humiliation. If you dare outright combat, you're just asking for it.

In Sunday night's opener of what promises to be an engagingly discourteous set of confrontations, Mr. Moore, representing himself as a one-man People's Democratic Republic of Television (PDRTV), stages encounters with Kenneth Starr and like-minded pursuers of sinners and with a big health-management company, whose policies Mr. Moore finds lethal.

So there is Mr. Moore (you may recognize him from ''TV Nation'' by his baseball cap and sneakers) leading an amusingly outfitted coven of Bible-waving Puritans chasing impeachment-prone legislators. It's billed as a Washington witch hunt.

As the Moore congregation cries ''Repent! Repent!,'' their leader inquires of Representative Asa Hutchinson, ''Are you a fornicator?'' It takes a moment for Mr. Hutchinson to determine that Mr. Moore is not Jim Lehrer before he hastens out of camera range. Representative Bob Barr actually gets into an unedifying exchange about an episode in his career involving sex and whipped cream.

In the second segment, Mr. Moore torments a public relations executive for Humana, an H.M.O., with an invitation to the funeral of a Florida man who expects to die soon because the company has declined to pay for his needed pancreas transplant. It's not for me to give away Humana's response, but this time out Mr. Moore's satire is directed, perhaps inadvertently, not just at the easy target of an H.M.O., but also at television's habit, indulged in by Mr. Moore himself, of using a heart-stirring story about one sad case to influence decisions about money and health for everyone.

Well, at least he does it in a satisfyingly outrageous way. Among the promised targets as ''The Awful Truth'' proceeds: an antihomosexual minister, tobacco lobbyists and the United Parcel Service. In a more benign mood, Mr. Moore will also endeavor to give Bill Gates a housewarming gift of Martha Stewart sheets and to come up with a date for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

THE AWFUL TRUTH Bravo, Sunday night at 9

Written and directed by Michael Moore; Kathleen Glynn and Mr. Moore, executive producers; Ellin Baumel, producer; Dave Hamilton, supervising producer; Tia Lessin, senior producer; Charlie Siskel, co-producer; Ann Cohen, head writer. Produced by United Broadcasting Inc. for Channel 4 UK in association with Bravo.

Published: 04 - 09 - 1999 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 3 , Page 29