“KIDNAPPED”

Tonight at 10 on NBC/Ch. 4

(three stars)

ONE sure thing about TV this fall is that it’s packed with ac-tors who’d normally turn their noses up at series in favor of doing “important” work in movies or on Broadway.

Like “Snakes on a Plane” or “Three Days of Rain,” to name a few.

Enter “Kidnapped,” the new drama with actors we normally associate with good movies: Timothy Hutton and Delroy Lindo.

They are teamed up in this fast-paced serial with equally classy TV actors, Dana Delany and Jeremy Sisto – vets of shows that proved that some of the best entertainment can happen on the tube (“Six Feet Under” and “China Beach”).

That makes “Kidnapped” perfect for all concerned because it falls somewhere between the best entertainment and that vast TV wasteland.

On tonight’s premiere, the son of a rich industrialist and his stiff wife (Hutton and Delany) is on his way to school with a friend in the family limo when the car is attacked. A horrible shootout ensues in which the driver is killed and, inexplicably, the boy’s bodyguard, Virgil (Mykelti Williamson), is left for dead.

Shortly, a note arrives for the parents that reads “Don’t call the police!” They don’t. Instead, the dad calls a guy who calls a guy and they bring in a kidnapping specialist, Knapp (Sisto). Renegade ex-cop Knapp (how can someone always need a shave?) takes the gig. Who knew you could make a living at such a thing?

Since the giant shootout hasn’t seemed to rouse any cops, Virgil’s wife calls in his old friend (Lindo) a ready-to-retireseenit-all-Fed after she notices her husband’s gone missing. Hello?

After school, yet, the snatched kid’s stillbloodied friend shows up at the mogul’s house to tell what he knows. (Yes, he goes to school after surviving a violent bloody shootout, several murders and a kidnapping!) The incompetent Feds, meantime, find out about the kidnapping and screw up not just the money drop, but endanger the kid who’s being held in a filthy place in Brooklyn.

Presumably, the tangled plot plays out through the rest of the season.

All in all, it’s a good show. The problem, however, is the retreaded storyline, from the bad money drop to the kidnapped kid on meds, the ready-to-retire agent lured back into action, the incompetent FBI guy, and the sociopathic kidnappers who live in filth. Can’t a character be kidnapped by, say, Martha Stewart and sleep on 400-count sheets from K-Mart while waiting to be rescued?