A REALLY NICE GUY : 'Jesus' on CBS.

The casting director of "Jesus" (CBS, May 14 and 17) has assigned the starring role to Jeremy Sisto, a luxuriantly hirsute, good-looking surfer-type with a pleasant baritone, a ready smile, and excellent orthodontia. As a consequence, our Lord is once again presented as the only male inhabitant of Roman-occupied Judea with shoulder-length hair and a flower child's bonhomie.

This production is, according to the oxymoron of a CBS publicist, "an epic miniseries," a pretty accurate label for these four hours of bland television.

Jesus is introduced while in the throes of a nightmare, a dream--presumably more disorienting to him than to the audience--of savage Crusaders, ruthless inquisitors, and fatally wounded infantrymen all bellowing his name as they wreak and suffer the carnage of future millennia. He awakens beside Joseph--played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, who looks, sounds, and acts remarkably like the old Geppetto of Walt Disney's Pinocchio cartoon--in a roadside bivouac on their way to Bethany, where they have contracted with Lazarus for some carpentry work. There it quickly transpires that Jesus and Mary Magdalene have a crush on each other, which Martha and Lazarus not only approve but are encouraging toward matrimony.

This, obviously, cannot be, and shortly after Joseph dies, Jesus shows up again in Bethany tenderly, but firmly, informing Mary that his earthly father's death "has ended my life as I know it, and it's time now that I find my way." When Mary asks where his way is, Jesus tells her, "It can't be with you." In Saint John's account, this same Mary will later, over the understandable objections of a more practical disciple, pour costly fragrant oil over the feet of an appreciative Jesus, drying them with her hair. But the anointing at Bethany is omitted from this epic miniseries, as are nearly all of the Gospel's many numinous narrative speed bumps. Jesus curses no fig trees, terrifies no Gerasene peasants, announces no disturbing intention to divide previously peaceful households. Whatever else he may be, the messiah of CBS is decidedly not the Goodly Fere of Ezra Pound's poem, who could

   ...cow a thousand men
   On the hills o' Galilee.
   They whined as He walked out calm between,
   Wi' his eyes like the grey o' the sea....

In the opinion of Pound's narrator, Simon Zelotes, "They'll no' get Him a' in a book I think, though they write it cunningly." They apparently won't get him in an epic miniseries, either.

Nor is Suzette Couture's script for "Jesus" so cunningly written. She has simply jettisoned any of the disconcerting things that the Gospel writers have said about or attributed to Jesus. He bears no warning that the day of judgment will close like a trap, nor does he wonder aloud how much longer he must put up with a faithless and perverse generation. He is not a consuming fire, but a very agreeable and idealistic young man--the son, after all, of Jacqueline Bisset--who laments the sway of anger and fear in the world. There is plenty of goodnatured horseplay with his disciples, a jubilant water splashing contest at a village well, a giggle or two while he skips rocks on the Sea of Galilee or plays whirligig with a delighted child. The only people in Judea able to resist this sensitive New Age Guy are such unadulterated bad guys as Herod, Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate, who, despite being given a much more active and treacherous role than the evangelists assigned him, and despite a clever performance by Gary Oldman (among the baddest of all possible guys), manages to seem as drearily wicked as Jesus manages to seem drearily good.

The Lord of an epic miniseries must not be overly judgmental, so this one imposes no authoritative demands and speaks with endearing self-deprecation. Immediately before preaching a bowdlerized Sermon on the Mount ("Wealth does not buy life and a good heart..."), this Jesus glances about himself with a rueful shrug, asking his apostles, "Do you think I'll have something to say?" When he stumbles across the aftermath of a Zealot guerrilla raid, he confronts Barabbas to plead in vain for the life of a captured Roman soldier. Even as Jesus expresses his abhorrence of the slashing of Roman throats, his words yield no hint that such bloodshed affronts his Father's will, but merely echo old Peter, Paul, and Mary songs: "When does it stop?" The disgusted Barabbas should hardly be blamed for slugging him.

When the narrative is more carefully aligned with Scripture, it is mawkishly illustrated. The baptism of Jesus might have been lifted from the pages of Marvel Comics or Treasure Chest. The crucifixion takes place in front of a picturesque aqueduct that ruptures at the death of Jesus so that Sisto and Bisset's perfectly arranged pieta may be bathed in a lachrymose rain. After the Resurrection, Jesus fades out from the upper room into a celestial immensity of blue sky and sappy music. You can almost hear the director muttering "yadayadayada."

The recent conflagration in Kanungu, Uganda, and similar holocausts of Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate disciples, Knights of the Solar Temple, adherents of Aum Shin Rikyo, and the followers of Jim Jones all reveal a glimpse of the teeth and claws of religious faith. To those who yearn for what the Gospels promise, they reveal as well a glimpse of what the Gospels cost. What CBS reveals in "Jesus" is a glimpse of something like Warner Sallman's famous painting The Head of Christ, a bland and thoroughly domesticated savior, neither promising nor costing much at all.

Some three hundred years after the events so feebly recounted in this television program, Julian the Apostate lay fatally wounded and brooding over the collapse of his efforts to revive Rome's imperial paganism. He is supposed to have despairingly exclaimed, "Vicisti, Galilaee!" (Something like, "You, win, Jesus!") The emperor's famous last words inspired a line which Algernon Charles Swinburne used to taunt the fatuous churchgoing bourgeoisie of his own time: "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath." Whether or not Swinburne was just another narcissistic Victorian tilting against a preposterous, Anglicized caricature of the Lord, to view this epic miniseries is to understand the Swinburnes of this world much better, and even to sympathize with them a little.

Michael O. Garvey is the author of Finding Fault.