Caterina Scorsone stars in “Alice,” a Syfy original miniseries based on the classic tale “Alice in Wonderland.”

TV characters frequently slip through some version of the looking glass and find themselves in strange places — a surreal island on “Lost,” an alternate universe on “Fringe,” an odd totalitarian landscape in AMC’s recent remake of “The Prisoner.” So it’s only natural that every now and then, TV tackles the stories that gave us the “through the looking glass” phrase in the first place, Lewis Carroll’s tales about “Alice in Wonderland.”

The latest attempt, Syfy’s “Alice,” is yet another one of those “re-imaginings” of which the cable channel is so particularly fond. It even comes from writer-director Nick Willing, who gave us “Tin Man,” a “Wizard of Oz” re-imagining, a couple of years ago.

Like “Tin Man,” Alice takes a character who was originally still in childhood and turns her into a young, independent woman (Caterina Scorsone) who’s on a very different journey than the original writer imagined. And, like “Tin Man,” it’s an overlong misfire.

Scorsone’s Alice is an urban karate instructor — which comes in handy during the miniseries’ many fight scenes — who’s still close to her mom. Her father abandoned the family years ago, when Alice was still 10 (to Willing’s credit, he makes several on-screen references to Carroll’s original Alice). Shortly after Alice takes the big step of introducing her new guy Jack (Crusoe’s Philip Winchester) to mom, Jack takes the even bigger step of trying to give Alice a ring.

It’s clearly not an engagement ring, but Alice still freaks out and pushes Jack out the door, saying he’s going too fast, without allowing him to explain himself. But Jack still manages to slip the ring into her pocket, and when Alice tries to chase Jack down to return it, she finds him being attacked and abducted by weird-looking thugs. When she pursues them, she falls through a mirror, and presto, she’s in Wonderland.

That’s a lot of set-up, but “Alice” runs through it pretty quickly — much more quickly than this two-part, four-hour (counting commercials) miniseries gets through the rest of its story. Willing, who also directed a 1999 TV version of the story, seems to have a problem with restraint — both of his versions are at least twice as long as the most famous feature-film versions, a cameo-studded 1933 movie and the 1951 Disney cartoon.

As Willing’s script meanders, the miniseries becomes more a matter of seeing how well-known actors will interpret Carroll’s famous characters. Kathy Bates is predictably domineering as the ruthless Queen of Hearts, Tim Curry barely registers in a brief role as Dodo, and Harry Dean Stanton is expectedly eccentric as Caterpillar.

They’re all upstaged by Matt Frewer, still best-known for playing Max Headroom, as the bumbling but big-hearted White Knight, and by Eugene Lipinski in a particularly creepy variation on Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum that comes in one of the miniseries’ most effective set pieces. (“Primeval’s” Andrew Lee Potts — as a not-very-mad Hatter, Alice’s closest ally — does a very good job of looking good in a hat.)

“Alice” is a triumph of style over content (and TV viewers will get to see more style than most critics, who were sent rough-cut preview discs lacking many final visual effects). It’s one of those things where you notice the art direction and costume design (especially the nifty playing-card outfits the Queen’s henchmen wear) more than you notice the story or the words.

It’ll look great in high-def, but it’s a missed opportunity on just about every other level. With Willing having tackled the story twice, it’s evident that it holds some sort of appeal for him, so why let it degenerate into a B-level action movie in the second part or write a script that doesn’t even try to pay respect to Carroll’s gift for wordplay?

Visually, “Alice” does go through the looking glass, but its script merely goes through the motions.

‘Alice’

When: 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday

Where: Syfy