TheSix Million Dollar Man marries the Bionic Woman - sounds like a stupid joke, right? Right. And it's on tonight at 9 on Channel 9, in a special titled "Bionic Ever After?"

You may remember these TV heroes of nearly 20 years ago, which is almost prehistoric in television time. He (Lee Majors) was an astronaut who was rebuilt after a training boo-boo, a $6 million human robot with man-made, super-powered limbs and one computerized eye. She (Lindsay Wagner) also got bionic legs, a right arm and a right ear after being in a skydiving accident. They worked as secret agents for the Office of Strategic Information (CIA) and solved most of their exciting and dangerous adventures by jumping over buildings and busting through doors - that kind of thing.

But time has passed, and the machinery is rusting. Majors always had the limited acting authority of a football star, kind of solid and unemotional. If a light moment was called for, he could always twinkle, especially if the lighting was right. Now he is even more solid, like one of those guys who have been working out at the gym too long. I'll say this for him - his hair does not look dyed, and when he gets up from a crouch he only grimaces slightly.

Wagner is still slim, only a teensy bit crepey around the chin, and - perhaps unwisely - wearing the same long hairdo she did 20 years ago: the college coed look with a wee bit of frosting. She even plays racquetball with her locks floating around her, not the most authentic coiffure to wear with sweat. Her hair is not bad, however, compared with the toupee parade demonstrated by other characters.

It isn't the fact that they have aged that is unattractive. It's that they're pretending they haven't.

But who cares about authenticity here? The plot dilemma is that Wagner's character, Dr. Jaime Sommers (so clever to place that "i" in the middle), has been attacked mysteriously by a debilitating ailment on the very eve of her nuptials. First the bionic arm starts to hurt, then the whole program goes belly up. Naturally she won't marry Steve Austin when there is some chance she may not measure up as the spouse of his dreams. "He expects a woman who can run 60 miles an hour with him," she sobs.

To take his mind off his heartbreak (he is visibly teary in one scene), Austin takes off for Nassau, where a nasty terrorist gang has taken over the American Embassy and is threatening everyone with a nuclear Scud missile.

Now, we don't want to give anything away about the plot, but there is some jumping over buildings, and up them, and busting in of doors.

After about half an hour I realized that the non-Nassau action is supposed to be taking place right here in Washington, D.C., including the scenes of Austin piloting the huge motorboat he has for his charter business, and office scenes of Sommers's psychological counseling service. The way you can figure out it's supposed to be Washington is that every time they cut to OSI chief Oscar Goldman's office they flash the Capitol on the screen, as though the intelligence service were right down the hall from Bob Dole. Perhaps in the bionic future all government employees have been replaced with computers, and everyone can fit into the Capitol with only a Dole-clone to push the buttons.

Likewise, I think Nassau is actually Charleston, S.C.; when Wagner picks up a manhole cover to hurl it at the terrorists, the cover says "CPW" on it. And a scene of an embassy reception shows guests in long formal ball gowns, which would happen only if Queen Elizabeth had invited everyone to come next door for supper afterward. In real life, embassy receptions are about as glamorous as a checkout line at the Safeway.

But as I was saying, authenticity is not paramount here. And one could certainly overlook the lack of it, if there was anything else to focus on. But you kind of miss it in a movie where everyone, not just the robots, talks like a machine, where the plot elements lurch around like bears in the dark, and the dialogue is as clever as a billboard.

It's the kind of movie that makes commercials look good.