THE budget was $60m. The cast features some of Hollywood's most applauded stars led by Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. The director's past hits include The Graduate and Working Girl. The original play won its author the Pulitzer Prize.

In short, Angels In America is a drama event that wouldn't look out of place in cinemas across the world. Instead it's coming to a small screen near you.

The fact that the six-hour epic is being shown on TV is evidence that movie stars no longer think size is everything. They're prepared to work for an audience lazing around on the sofa if the project is right. The snobbishness that led to TV being viewered as inferior to the movies has all but vanished.

The two have always fed on each other. Films have been developed into TV series with varying success. M*A*S*H, the most successful transfer, ran for 11 years which, as someone noted, was eight years longer than the Korean War in which it was set. Even film flops, like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, have enjoyed a longer life through spin-offs on the small screen. And movie producers have always plundered the TV archives for subjects, whether it's cheap-and-cheerful British fare such as On The Buses and Steptoe And Son, or big budget US transfers like Charlie's Angels and Starsky And Hutch.

Now the line between big and small screen is becoming increasingly blurred. A top Hollywood producer like Jerry Bruckheimer, whose Pirates Of The Caribbean was one of 2003's biggest movies hits, isn't adverse to taking his talent for putting together commercial packages to TV now that US TV has gained credibility thanks to top-flight dramas like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The West Wing.

Bruckheimer, king of the crowd-pleasing summer movie blockbuster, has his name attached to several of US television's top series. He's executive producer of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which has already given birth to a spin-off CSI: Miami and a second spin-off CSI: Somewhere Else is reportedly in the pipeline.

Another of his series, the FBI missing persons drama Without A Trace, was snapped up by Channel 4. He has a number of other shows either on screen or in development. Last year, three of his series occupied places in the top ten US TV charts at the same time, something that no other producer had managed to do.

The attraction is the speed of working for TV. A movie takes years of scripting, finding the finance, shooting, editing and marketing. The small screen delivers success or failure with a short, sharp shock. "I love the speed of it," Bruckheimer says.

"You develop something, you go to pilot and you know within three weeks whether you get on the air. Movies take forever. I've worked on scripts for ten years and finally got them made, whereas in television everything is made in a six month period."

His success can only encourage other movie producers to try their luck. Wearing their producers' hats, George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh developed K Street, a series about a firm of Washington political lobbyists. They join other notable film Hollywood hotshots who've downsized to the small screen. Steven Spielberg, of course, began his directing career helming series like Columbo and enjoyed his first brush with film fame when his made-for-TV movie Duel was considered good enough to merit a cinema release.

He and top actor Tom Hanks turned from big to small screen as to produce the Second World War series Band Of Brothers for TV. Spielberg also had his name on sci-fi series Taken, while Hanks developed hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding - which he and wife Rita Wilson helped produce - into a TV series. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after the first series.

The attraction for Hollywood actors, producers and directors is that working for TV enables them to take more risks than the commercially-minded film studios are prepared to allow. They can also take longer to tell a story on their terms.

Someone said that if Angels In America had been made as a cinema film it would have gone home with every available Oscar come Academy Award time. But there's no way it could have run for six hours or dealt with a potentially uncommercial story - about a group of HIV-positive gay men during the Reagan era in America - in an uncompromising way. Tony Kushner's award-winning play would almost certainly have changed beyond all recognition in order to cram it into a cinema-length running time.

Angels In America came from HBO, the cable subscription channel that has helped revolutionise what Americans, and therefore viewers around the world, see on TV. The big networks are at the mercy of advertisers. HBO wasn't bound by the censorship over sex and language that restricted the other channels, and could allow its series and film-makers for artistic leeway. Many of the most successful, as well as most praised and trend-setting, series in recent years have emerged from HBO, from The Sopranos to Sex And The City.

Viewers and critics alike in the US praised Angels In America, and the drama took home five top awards in the Golden Globes TV categories last month. This success can only encourage more Hollywood talent to get in on the small screen act.

l Angels In America: C4, Saturday and Sunday, 9pm.

l CSI: Miami: five, Saturday, 9pm.

l Without A Trace: C4, Monday, 10pm.

l CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: five, Tuesday, 9pm.