TV REVIEW : ‘Abraham’ on TNT--Gritty but Appealing

Television’s celebration of Easter wouldn’t be complete without a few channel sightings of old Hollywood epics like “The Ten Commandments.”

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But viewers this Easter can opt for a grittier, harder approach to biblical movies with the premiere of the four-hour Old Testament tale “Abraham” on TNT.

Featuring Richard Harris and Barbara Hershey as Abraham and Sarah, the prosperous shepherd and his wife leading followers to New Canaan, the production is almost devoid of the sword-and-sandals, sex-and-sin standard Hollywood Bible fare associated with the De Mille and Zanuck opuses of the 1950s.

Shot in the south of Morocco (where Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth” and David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” were also shot), the howling wind and dry, desolate, hardscrabble look of the land mirror what life in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt might have been like in Abraham’s time--about 2000 B.C.

The production strives to be candid about the way people lived. For instance, the depiction of giving birth--the mother inside a dusty tent with her legs agonizingly straddled and both the mother and a midwife howling like banshees--is palpably real and almost hard to watch.

Of course, this Easter presentation predates Christianity. It’s a spiritual odyssey for diverse believers and even nonbelievers. As the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and the Muslim religions, Harris’ Abraham is seen as a down-to-earth figure not so much born to greatness as a man with greatness borne down upon him.

Doubters and nonbelievers can simply relish an extraordinary story. The miniseries, directed by Joseph Sargent from a script by Robert McKee, is, on one level, a lurid story of violence, animal and human sacrifice, wars and assorted skirmishes, including, not least, the destruction of Sodom, where straight and homosexual residents casually frolic in orgies on public streets and shadowy crevices.

But fans longing for action like that great chariot race in the 1959 “Ben-Hur” will be disappointed. The physical texture of “Abraham” is so comparatively ascetic and unadorned that when Abraham’s people stumble into the grand lair of an Egyptian Pharaoh (Maximilian Schell, looking ridiculous in a huge, cumbersome Egyptian wig), you’re relieved to cool off and get out from under the burning sun.

An international production (the joint venture of Italian, German and American companies) with a largely Italian cast, “Abraham” stands as both an accessible document of faith and a suspenseful Old Testament story mercifully told without sound and fury and, thankfully, with absolutely no resort to special effects.

When God/Jehovah speaks to Abraham, urging him forth to the Promised Land and later asking him to ritually sacrifice his beloved son Issac as a test of his faith, what we hear is not some booming, disembodied voice but God speaking to Abraham in the shepherd’s very own low, whispery voice.

Harris grows with nice, easy strength into the stature of his character. And when we read in the final credit role that “Abraham lived to good fullness of his time” and was “buried in the cave in Hebron” next to Sarah, the word Hebron echoes with a newly forged and bloody identity.

* “Abraham” airs in two parts on TNT cable. Part I airs Sunday at 5, 7 and 9 p.m.; Part II airs Monday at 5, 7 and 9 p.m.