`TSUNAMI' A COMPELLING LOOK AT BATTERED LIVES.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

In HBO's miniseries ``Tsunami, the Aftermath,'' the cataclysm that arose from the Christmas 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in the Indian Ocean doesn't get all that much screen time itself. It comes about 15 minutes into tonight's installment, after we've seen sundry tourists enjoying their vacations in Thailand and natives toiling to ensure the tourists are satisfied.

Instead, the film is, as its title suggests, concerned with how the survivors coped after massive tidal waves washed away their lives, with the heroic if often thwarted efforts of rescue workers and other disturbing narratives that resulted from the disaster that killed a quarter of a million people and rousted the citizens of the world from their post-holiday reveries.

At the heart of the film - billed as fiction, though based on true accounts - lies the tragic story of Ian (Chiwetel Ejiofor, ``Dirty Pretty Things'' and ``Inside Man'') and Susie Carter (Sophie Okonedo, ``Hotel Rwanda''), a British couple whose lives unravel when their daughter disappears in the tsunami and they embark upon a wild goose chase to try to locate her.

Ian is plagued by the anguishing fact that he lost his grasp on her as the flood waters coursed through; when Susie discovers that, she freezes him out and directs her attentions on another young survivor who looks a little like their missing daughter.

Ejiofor's performance is wrenching yet never overwrought; his face is etched with the quiet, haunting knowledge that the answer to his question, ``How do we come back from this?'' is simply an unspoken, ``We don't.''

But that's just one of the absorbing stories essayed here. Gina McKee (``The Forsyte Saga'') plays a woman who lost her husband in the disaster and desperately tries to get her son med-evac'd out of the area before he loses his leg.

Samrit Machielsen plays a native who works as a busboy and loses his entire family in the catastrophe 7/8 and that's just the beginning of his bad news. Toni Collette (``The Sixth Sense,'' ``Little Miss Sunshine'') and Hugh Bonneville (``Notting Hill'') play British Embassy operatives heading up a halting rescue operation.

And Tim Roth (``Rob Roy,'' ``Vincent and Theo'') has a lot of heavy lifting to do as, apparently, the only working journalist in the area: He single-handedly breaks the stories of monks burning corpses before they are identified, of a discredited scientist who had warned of such an impending disaster and of a hotel conglomerate's land grab of villagers' land immediately after the tragedy. No wonder, after a few days, he looks even more disheveled and desiccated than the actual survivors.

Shot on location in Thailand, ``Tsunami, the Aftermath'' is written and directed with an exquisite sensitivity that at times can border on earnestness by Abi Morgan and Bharat Nalluri, respectively. It's grim stuff, to be sure, made compelling by the heartbreaking performances of Okonedo and, particularly, Ejiofor.

David Kronke, [phone]

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TSUNAMI, THE AFTERMATH - Three stars

What: Docudrama on the 2004 Tsunami that devastated Thailand and areas throughout Southeast Asia.

Where: HBO.

When: Part 1: 8 tonight; also 2:15 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, 8:15 a.m. and 8 p.m. Wednesday, 3:30 and 11:30 p.m. Friday, noon and 8 p.m. Saturday, 6:15 p.m. Dec. 17, 6:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. Dec. 20, 7:45 a.m. and 6:15 p.m. Dec. 23, 4:15 p.m. and midnight Dec. 26, 2:30 p.m. Dec. 30. Part 2: 8 p.m. Dec. 17, 3 and 11 p.m. Dec. 19, 8:30 p.m. and 4:25 a.m. Dec. 20, 3:15 and 11 p.m. Dec. 22, 9:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Dec. 23, 4:30 p.m. and midnight Dec. 27, 2:30 p.m. Dec. 31.

In a nutshell: Grimly effective evocation of the tragedy, punctuated by wrenching performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sophie Okonedo.

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Sophie Okonedo and Chiwetel Ejiofor play a British couple who lose their daughter during the December 2004 disaster and struggle to deal with their loss in ``Tsunami, the Aftermath.''