What's the deal? Doesn't big-screen charisma translate to the home screen? Do feature names lord their fame over those who know TV better? Or are producers ineffective working bass-ackwards to shape shows around star personas?

The cocky appeal Slater had strutted for two decades since Heathers was pretty much submerged in an NBC set-up so complicated, his show became its own worst enemy. Producers could barely describe their double-life subliminally switched-on secret- agent story when they hyped it at last summer's press tour. Thus baffled critics couldn't tout the tale to readers. And few viewers wended their way through the story's machinations.

But complication isn't always the case.

Look at Sally Field. Sure, the spunky actress is winning friends and Emmys now on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. But when the same network designed a fairly clear-cut show around Field in 2002 -- The Court, where she wrangled with other decision-delivering Supremes -- the result was three-weeks-and-out. Field's current Sunday night success says her hard-driving persona works better as part of a wide-ranging ensemble, and in a family setting, rather than a workplace/issues framework.

Other crowdpleasers who seemed like sure bets to soar on TV have taken nose dives instead. When flashy-fun Bette Midler headlined CBS' half- hour Bette by essentially playing herself -- a movie star trying to lead a normal life with her husband and teenage daughter -- industry observers marked it fall 2000's surest hit. But the show got mucked-with post-pilot in recasts of the husband and daughter. Samantha Who? dad Kevin Dunn gave way to Airplane!-er Robert Hays, while hot Parent Trap teen Lindsay Lohan (!) was replaced by Marina (who?) Malota. Choices like that made the show safer. And duller. Even with a parade of glitzy guests -- Oprah Winfrey, Tim Curry, Dolly Parton -- Bette didn't last a season.

Neither did the hot pick of 2003, NBC's Miss Match, starring Alicia Silverstone as a matchmaker in a sort of land-locked love boat. The Clueless star showed charm to burn, but the Friday night hour crashed. Maybe scheduling its lighthearted romance on a date night wasn't such a hot idea. And its makers seemed clueless how to showcase their star's appeal amid new situations weekly.

Whoops with Whoopi, too. This 2003 NBC sitcom cast Whoopi Goldberg as an ex-R&B star running a quirky Manhattan inn peopled by offbeat characters -- her political-opposite conservative brother, his black-talking white girlfriend, a Persian janitor. Great setup for Comedy Central, maybe, or Showtime. But the show's hard-edged topicality and opinion-spouting characters were not exactly network- audience friendly.

Drama series have also been duds for movie stars trying TV. Richard Dreyfuss played a college professor -- another long-shot setting -- in CBS' 2001 drama The Education of Max Bickford, which also featured a transgendered character played by Helen Shaver. Not a good bet in Sunday's old Murder She Wrote timeslot. (Although the show did offer Battlestar Galactica star-to-be Katee Sackhoff as Dreyfuss' daughter.)

Karen Sisco marked a much ballyhooed TV return for Carla Gugino, the ex-Spin City second banana who found big-screen fame playing mom in the Spy Kids flicks. ABC's 2003 actioner, based on the Jennifer Lopez movie Out of Sight, debuted with high expectations. But barely made it a month.

And these are just the recent no-gos. You could glance back to the early '70s for just one flurry of flops from such certified filmland legends as James Stewart (the familycom The Jimmy Stewart Show, legal eagle in Hawkins), Henry Fonda (The Smith Family), Debbie Reynolds (The Debbie Reynolds Show) and Shirley MacLaine (Shirley's World).

But let's look forward. Who'll be the next big-screener bellyflopping into the tube pool? We could throw around such dwindling-draw names as Julia Roberts, Kevin Costner, even Madonna, who's now 50 and can't sex it up on arena stages forever. Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams started in TV, remember, and could well end up returning.

In the meantime, if Brothers & Sisters needs to fill any more secret-surprise relative roles, we hear Christian Slater's available.