It is no small feat to pull off the trick of interweaving so many characters and storylines, but the producers of "Six Degrees"... have accomplished it with admirable smoothness for a series that is just getting under way.

Six Degrees starts off almost as an anthology series, with six stories set in six different worlds, each one quite interesting. But as their orbits draw closer, interest rapidly morphs into fascination.

A pleasantly diverting bumper-car drama of chance encounters, new friendships and random triggers.

New York also offers the gift of its locations, which are used abundantly and give the show a sense of reality its script does not always earn. (The actors take up the rest of the slack.)

Six Degrees certainly clips along, but moving quickly between insipid links and boring characters doesn't make them any less insipid or boring.

The show is laced with wit and blessed with fine actors... Yet the coincidences that bring the show’s six wayfarers together to form their own little island on the big island are vexingly hokey.

It's lame and it's limp, and as deployed for "Six Degrees," the conceit would seem to owe quite a bit to the movie "Crash," among such other more antique inspirations as "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."