Radio drama is making a comeback - on TV.

NBC started the trend with its movie "The Nightman" a few weeks back, and the movement picks up steam this week with ABC's "Seduction: Three Tales from the Inner Sanctum" and USA's "Treacherous Crossing" (premiering Wednesday, April 8). All are based on old radio plays.

It's easy to understand TV's temptation to raid the larders of radio dramas. For one thing, they are the product of a more literate age, in which even the most miserable hacks had sufficient education to balance their sentences and know the difference between "hopefully" and "I hope" - unlike some TV writers of today.

But the drawback of converting radio plays to a visual medium is also easy to see (so to speak). The limitations of radio are also its great strength - the audience must imagine the action, allowing each listener to conjure up one's own private drama. When we actually see the action played out, much of the seductive magic is drained.

This strength and weakness are both displayed in "Treacherous Crossing." Set in 1947 aboard a luxurious ship (it was shot on board the Queen Mary), the movie stars Lindsay Wagner as Lindsey Gates, who is honeymooning with her new husband, Kenneth. When he fails to meet her at a ship's bar, Lindsey has the crew search for him - but it turns out that she is registered under her maiden name, her passport and tickets are missing, and the maid who Lindsey says showed her and Kenneth to their suite denies seeing him.

Then the ship's security chief (played by Grant Show) learns that Lindsey's first husband died by hanging, that she was briefly suspected of murdering him and that she was just let out of a sanitarium.

Facing skepticism and even hostility, Lindsey mounts a desperate search, aided only by a blowsy fellow passenger (Angie Dickinson in a kicky performance) and the kindly ship's doctor (Jeffrey DeMunn). Is Lindsey a murderer? Insane? Or the victim of a diabolical plot?

"Treacherous Crossing" is a reasonably intelligent suspenser, but we couldn't help imagining how much more chilling it must have been as it was heard in a darkened room, with its sole special effects being slowly creaking doors and the ominous nuances that only the human voice can muster.

Still, it's worth watching, if only to see Lindsay Wagner in a snood. She looks pretty good in it, too.