TV REVIEWS : ‘Adrift’ at Sea With Killers

“Adrift” (at 9 tonight on CBS, Channels 2 and 8) takes a basic conflict--two couples alone on a yacht in the open sea who want to kill each other--and plays it to the hilt.

Kate Jackson as the resilient heroine looks right at home in these troubled waters, and the attractive-looking sister and brother psychos who are invited aboard (Bruce Greenwood and Kelly Rowan) are emotionally warped killers who are wisely cast against the grain.

Jackson’s character is an upscale wife just ending an extramarital affair who agrees to embark on a Pacific yachting vacation with her husband (Kenneth Welsh) who’s seeking to rekindle their marriage. When they find a man and a woman near death on a derelict boat, they take them aboard and nurse them back to health.

It’s a fatal decision that viewers, thanks to a strategic introduction, are already prepared for. The writers (Terry Gerritsen, Graham Flashner and co-executive producer Ed Gernon) signal in the very opening, garish seconds the violence and tension that will consume the story. It’s a scene, like the charged moments throughout, that crackles under the sure action direction of Christian Duguay.

Of course, the moviemakers have effectively retooled a derivative format. The story echoes such other sailboat/hitchhiker movies as CBS’ terrific ’91 docudrama “And the Sea Will Tell” and even Roman Polanski’s early classic “A Knife in the Water.”

The confined quarters of this boat are abundant with suspense, and the modest “Adrift” is a crafty little thriller, a sturdy sail that blows the brine back in your face. There’s even a moral: The next time you cross the ocean, don’t pick up strangers.