When taking on roles in television movies, Lindsay Wagner looks for something with meaning a story line with a universal message.

"Their Second Chance," running on Lifetime cable tonight at 8, fits the bill, she says.

The fact-based drama not only revolves around a search by Barbara Colvin (Wagner) for the daughter she gave up for adoption at birth (Tracy Griffith), but also follows a reconnection with her daughter's father (Perry King).

As the story opens, Colvin, playing with her granddaughter, wonders about the baby girl she gave away. She then contacts the government agency holding the adoption information to seek her daughter's whereabouts. Coincidentally, her daughter is also seeking for information about her birth parents.

At an agency-coordinated meeting, mother and daughter hit it off. Then, the latter makes one more request she wants to meet her father.

That second meeting sets off a chain reaction that eventually reunites the long-separated lovers.

"The basic story is very real," Wagner says. "The adoption, the separation when people are young, a drinking problem, the whole story line."

Though playing a living person, Wagner wasn't compelled to reach out to the real family for information. The family did, however, visit the Vancouver set one night during the shooting.

"I've done 31 television films," the actress says, and "probably two-thirds of them are true stories. I have a great reverence to that an attraction. The flip side is that at some point, when people make an agreement [to sell their story], they have to let go. I really feel that the commitment is to the essence of what that part of their life represents."

Her attraction to fact-based dramas notwithstanding, Wagner admits there are a lot of real-life stories she'd like nothing to do with. Those she chooses to do, she explains, have an underlying theme to which she can connect.

"For the most part, they're the kind of stories that at their very root have something that means something to me," she says. "That is universal to all humans."

According to Griffith, the "Second Chance" story line could have been presented in a "very melodramatic, very soap opera-ish" way. The producers, though, played it realistic. "They really went with real emotions," Griffith says. "It could have been done in a really schmaltzy kind of way. This will be a lot more interesting to watch."

In recent years, Wagner has also taken an active role in producing the projects she works on. In 1991, she produced "Shattered Dreams," a telefilm about spousal abuse. She has plans to do more producing in the future.

Television tends to focus on the sensational aspects of issues, she says: "The way they do the stories, you may as well watch the news reports. Why should I stay and watch? What good is it going to do me to sit an watch this?

"My feeling is that issues tend to be posed in a reporting way," she says. "When you watch a show when you come away from it is the resonance in the audience: `I learned something about myself...' or `I learned something about human nature'? Or did I just rewatch a demonstration of an issue?"

Wagner said she was able to draw on some of her own experiences for her role in "Their Second Chance." She had done films about adoption, so she was well versed on the topic. But at the heart of this telefilm, she says, is the issue of relationships.

"It's a story about love, real love being eternal. It's about letting go of fears, old angers and resentments."

Says Griffith: "One of the things this movie will say or show is that being adopted is not like being a freak. It's just a different experience."

RICHARD HUFF