TV Reviews : Shipwrecked Family Battles the Odds in ABC’s ‘Savage Sea’

The most basic conflict in drama is man against nature. When the struggle is waged in its purest form, without any emotional adornments or psychological posturing, the effect can be quite purging, like a good horror story. Such is the effect of the South Seas family nightmare “Survive the Savage Sea” (tonight at 9 on ABC).

The ordeal, co-starring Robert Urich and Ali MacGraw, was inspired by actual events, which means that elements of the action were fictionalized. But that matters little because this story (with a teleplay by Fred Haines and Scott Swanton based upon the book by Dougal Robertson) can stand on its own as a bracing good yarn that catches some of the visceral drama of that classic ‘40s movie, “Lifeboat,” or Stephen Crane’s short story, “The Open Boat.”

The vast indifference of nature is the beautiful, implacable, terrifying enemy here. Directed by Kevin James Dobson off the Gold Coast and Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, the movie charts the disastrous voyage of a husband and wife (Urich and MacGraw), their three young children, and a ne’er-do-well deckhand (a flavorful performance by Aussie David Franklin) when their 50-foot schooner is capsized in the dead of night by whales.

For 38 days, surviving on dwindling rations, rainwater and an occasional fish or sea turtle that the father harpoons, the family bobs the Pacific in an inflatable raft and then a dinghy with a makeshift sail. Meanwhile, ferocious storms (captured so convincingly you feel wet watching them), sickness, the passing of ships that fail to see their flares, and the intimidating fins of sharks swishing around their frail craft tighten a grip on your worst fears.

This is not a story about how people become savages in a crisis. Rather the unstressed suggestion, with quiet heroism from the Urich/MacGraw characters, is that some people find courage and compassion when all seems lost--even if their minds go bonkers from time to time.