Fans will be tied up in `Knots' again                                         By Kirk Nicewonger

NEW YORK - The trouble with most TV-series reunions is, you sit down to get reacquainted with old friends, and you get up depressed about time's inexorable march. ``What the heck happened to HER?'' you ask ruefully. ``And I didn't even know he could BUY a belt that size!'' Just forget that apprehension in ``Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac'' (9 p.m., CBS, TV-PG; concludes Friday).

These people look great. I don't mean they look great ``for their age.'' I'm not talking about ``holding up well.'' I'm saying they look objectively, are-you-busy-Saturday-night great. Happily, the miniseries' script seems to have imbibed from that same fountain of youth. In fact, its friskiness can be out-and-out surreal: In one early scene, Val (Joan Van Ark) asks a movie-studio guard if that was Stefanie Powers she just spotted. Naw, he replies, that was Michele Lee - Van Ark's ``Knots Landing'' castmate.

Inside jokes notwithstanding, the miniseries re-creates the frothy angst that made the 1979-93 original so addictive. The ever wide-eyed Val runs into trouble as she works with an alcoholic screenwriter on the movie version of her best-selling kidnapping memoir. Greg (William Devane) and Abby (Donna Mills) plot to steal a document that will short-circuit a workers' lawsuit. Karen (Lee) is distressed by a Buick-sized midlife crisis in Mack (Kevin Dobson). And Gary (Ted Shackelford) faces a Shattering Revelation From His Past. But on the bright side... you're lookin' GOOD, gang.