Heaven help us The Bible reviewed A dramatisation of The Bible on Nine turns out to be more Game of Thrones than dusty sermon as sword-wielding ninja angels and a Scottish Noah spice things up. God really needs to do a better job making His intellectual property secure. The Bible, the American mini-series screening on Channel Nine, is an uninspiringly bad adaptation of a book that has inspired artists for thousands of years. You would think after that Mel Gibson movie, which maniacally focused on Jesus being beaten and tortured, the Lord would take a little more care with the next adaptation, but it's clear all the decent agents are ending up in hell. A huge success in the US, where it aired on the History Channel earlier this year (maybe they're finally running out of Hitler documentaries), The Bible was conceived by the husband-and-wife team of Mark Burnett, the creator of Survivor and The Apprentice, and Roma Downey, who previously starred in the long-running spiritual melodrama Touched by an Angel. If that sounds like an odd pairing, then the show reflects their influences: broad, impassioned performances tied to a ruthlessly structured narrative that moves from one dramatic moment to the next. When the prophet Samuel declared the Israelites would have a king to uphold God's laws, I half expected Survivor's Jeff Probst to hold a tribal council and then announce: "I'll go tally the votes." Preaching needs more practice: Diogo Morgado plays Jesus Christ in the American mini-series The Bible. Screening on Tuesday nights, The Bible is a simplistic, surface-skimming take on a text rich with incident and theme. The first five episodes have galloped through the Old Testament, offering a greatest-hits package from Moses and Noah through to Daniel in the lion's den. The remaining episodes, focused on Jesus Christ and not needing to leap centuries in a single edit, hold out the chance of maintaining a minimal focus. What have we learnt so far? The bad guys, and they're definitely depicted in such simple terms, favour eyeliner; some angels can do martial arts (bad luck for the residents of Sodom); if David's slingshot didn't work on Goliath, he could have blinded him with his dazzling white teeth; to converse with God, walk into the desert and look up. I'm no biblical scholar, but there might be some deviation from the source material here. There is virtually no sense of character, no thematic depth and no life to the dialogue. The roles are played with lines delivered either solemnly or archly. "You've heard about us?" a Jewish spy who has snuck inside Jericho asks a woman he's holding at knifepoint. "You have a god who commands the winds and parts the seas," she replies, and if you think that reads badly, that's still better than how it was delivered. There actually is a God on this show who commands the winds and parts the seas, and it's a ruddy big digital effects computer network that turns dozens of extras into hundreds, renders God's wrath from multiple angles and makes sure that the burning bush is strong enough for Moses to roast marshmallows if he wants. It's dicey, second-rate CGI, but preferable to some of the physical filmmaking: when Samson brought down the Philistine temple, the stone blocks had the tactile qualities of polystyrene. The Bible veers between the passable and the incompetent, but that's not merely a case of budget and ambition diverging. There's a long tradition of Bible stories being told in the simplest form, such as illustrated children's books, as an aid to missionary work, and that's what Burnett and Downey have intentionally made. This is a deliberately uncomplicated tool for making converts in the digital age. Will it work? Some misfires in the first half of the show's run have been comical, and recurring elements, such as the Israelites choosing a leader who ends up going against the wishes of God's prophet, are hardly inspiring. It doesn't help that there is a ready accent on violence, but a shuttered attitude to sexuality. The Bible was shot in Morocco, with some first-rate British actors cast, but few could prosper under such cheesy circumstances. When Samson, played by the fine actor Nonso Anozie (Game of Thrones), fights the Philistines, the slow-motion recalled The Incredible Hulk TV series from the 1970s. "Lord, is this what you want from me?" the shorn giant later asked, and he wasn't the only one beseeching a higher power for the suffering to end.