The hypothesis that anyone can be connected to anyone else on the planet through a chain of no more than five intermediaries was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy. Known as “six degrees of separation,” the theory has inspired a John Guare play and movie (“Six Degrees of Separation”), a popular board game (“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”), and may even have sparked wildly successful Internet sites like Friendster.com.

Now the idea is set to receive the workout of its life in the new ABC series, “Six Degrees,” which makes its premiere Thursday night. The writers include veterans of “The West Wing,” “Friends,” and “Sex and the City,” and the executive producer is J.J. Abrams, director of “Mission Impossible 3” and the prolific mastermind behind ABC gold mines “Alias” and “Lost.”

Speaking of minds, Mr. Karinthy’s was enveloped by brain cancer in 1938. “I went from being a humorist to a tumorist,” he is reported to have written in a posthumously published autobiographical novel, “A Journey Around My Skull.”

While it seems improbable that humor and tumor should rhyme in Hungarian as well as in English, you won’t find anything so bleakly witty in the pilot of “Six Degrees,” in which the traditional coincidences of plot are deliberately multiplied as the lives of six New Yorkers, previously unknown to one another, rapidly intertwine as if bound by invisible tendrils of fate.

The series kicks off with big, earnest thoughts delivered in voice-over. “Let me ask you this: Do you think you could fall in love with someone that you don’t really know at all?” asks Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a fresh-faced public defender whose life is about to be upended by an instant passion for Mae (Erika Christensen), a sad-eyed young woman with a mysterious past and the keys to an even more mysterious box that someone wants very, very badly.

“In this city, an absolute stranger can inspire you,” Carlos continues musingly over shots of Manhattan that strain to match the youthful rapture in his voice. “We’re all forced together every day, and the only thing that separates us is chance, fate maybe. You go through your life, your daily struggles, and you think you’re alone, but you’re not. There are 8 million people in the city, and any one of them, at any time, can walk into your life and change it forever.”

What we have here is mystically tinged romance for the Bluetooth set, a yearning for connection that might transcend text messaging and the wired, semi-transhumanist frenzy of the metropolis that Time Out recently dubbed “New Dork City.” Either that or it’s just one more case of “LOVE LOVE LOVE in slop buckets,” to quote the late William Burroughs.

Fortunately, the show’s protagonists are not all dewy-eyed 20-somethings. Laura (Hope Davis) is a convincingly wan, drained-looking widow whose war correspondent husband was killed while delivering an on-air report from Iraq. Six months later, she obsessively replays a video of his last moments deep into each insomniac night.

Steven (Campbell Scott), a once-famous photographer abandoned by both family and muse, is a recovering addict whose career is rescued by Whitney (Bridget Moynahan), a willowy PR executive on the rise being cheated on by her philandering swine of a fiancé. Lastly, there’s Damien (Dorian Missick), a black chauffeur with too many gambling debts and a compelling need to escape his criminal past.

Though the opening episode features a murder and multiple hints of troubles to come, the overall tone is fuzzily cosmic. (The pilot closes to the plangent sounds of U2’s “Walk On,” urban longing and melancholia writ large.) Nonetheless, the most telling moment may be when Laura, having decided to put her period of mourning behind her by applying for a job in design, is quizzed by a friend as to whether she’s finally cleared her apartment of her dead husband’s possessions. Apparently in today’s New York a relatively youthful widow re-entering the job market can’t hope to present a convincing professional front unless she’s signaled her devotion to the future by clearing her closets of the past. It’s a weirdly chilling moment — she’s applying for a job, not a boyfriend — but whether it’s anomalous or thematic only later episodes will tell.

As it is, when Laura relents, and bursts into tears on the sidewalk watching a van drive off with her husband’s boxed possessions, the prowling Steven, camera in hand, spots her, snaps her, and finally captures the chicly composed image of grief that convinces him his muse is back.

That future episodes of “Six Degrees” will feature mind-bending plot twists and multiplying personal relations is a given, and that box of Mae’s promises to be a MacGuffin to end all MacGuffins. Nonetheless, how long viewers stick with the show will depend on the allure of its characters as much as its plot. So far, they’re in the B+ range, with only Laura and Mae rising above the generic, though Mr. Scott is far too canny an actor not to keep you guessing. There’s certainly enough here to make one eager to tune in again.

As a portrait of New York, however, the pilot has to be judged a disappointment. Given the gaps on the sidewalks, the conveniently empty seats on the rush-hour subway trains, it often looks more like a city of 2 million than the 8 million we’re so portentously told about in the opening monologue.

A bit more edge and grit, not to mention a dose of claustrophobia-inducing hustle and bustle, would go a long way to providing a realistic foundation for the show’s dreamier flights of fancy. That New Yorkers are all unknowingly interconnected is an intriguing possibility. That they’re shoulder-to-shoulder is a fact.