On View : TNT’s Bible Studies : ‘ABRAHAM’ IS THE FIRST OF AN EPIC 22 TESTAMENT TALES

Richard Harris sits back in his pied-a-terre at the sumptuous Savoy Hotel on the River Thames, telling one of those on-the-set anecdotes that sounds like it was dreamed up by a Hollywood publicist. But he swears it’s true.

There he was, in Ourzazate, Morocco, playing Abraham in the TNT version of the eponymous Bible story that airs this week, when trouble occurred.

Harris was about to perform one of the most crucial scenes in the film, the moment when God tells Abraham, amid a blustery wind, that the land of Canaan will belong forever to him and his descendants.

“They had all these wind machines,” recalls Harris, wearing a white, ankle-length caftan he picked up in Morocco while shooting the film last year. “The wind would blow and the trees would rumble under the force of God.”

As crew members began testing the machines, however, the power generator broke and they couldn’t repair it. “I turned to (director) Joe Sargent and I said, ‘Turn the cameras, Joe,’ ” Harris recalls. Sargent balked, insisting they had to have the wind machines, but gave in to Harris’ urging.

Suddenly, as the director yelled for the cameras to roll, “a gale blew from the mountains with 10 times the force that the wind machines could have projected. When he stopped the cameras, the wind died. Can you believe this?”

When Sargent (who won an Emmy for “Miss Rose White”) decided to reposition his three cameras and shoot the same scene from different angles, the wind stirred up once again.

“I’ve got to tell you,” Harris says, “an eerie feeling permeated that entire crew, the likes of which I have never witnessed in my life. I said, ‘Joe, I think God has just given us his seal of approval.’ ”

For Harris, playing the patriarch of the Jewish and Islamic faiths, became a spiritual journey. But he nearly turned down the role out of fears over how the story and his character would be presented.

“I had a reluctance to do it,” he acknowledges. “I’ve seen all the Hollywood Bible movies and I found them all dreadful.” He also has some personal experience in the biblical department, having played Cain in John Huston’s 1966 film, “The Bible.”

Harris pours a cup of coffee, just delivered by room service, as bright sunshine--uncharacteristic for London in March--filters through his living room window.

“When Hollywood makes these movies,” he says, “they undoubtedly play these characters as either a rebel or a saint. They’re set up as being enormously heroic. I said I didn’t want to play him that way. Abraham, a man advanced in years, according to the Old Testament, had been chosen. And the responsibility of being chosen must have been enormous. Excruciating.

“So I said I would like to play him, not as a man born to greatness, but as a man with greatness thrust upon him. And how could he deal with it? I’d like the audience to get the feeling he was breaking under the strain of it.”

The four-hour, two-part film, which co-stars Barbara Hershey as Abraham’s wife, Sarah, is part of a massive project by two European television companies to film the entire Old Testament and create a video Bible for the modern age. Plans call for a series of 22 films, shot over a period of years, at a cost in excess of $100 million.

Leo Kirch, owner of the giant German media conglomerate, KirchGroup, first hired biblical scholars 16 years ago to find ways to give a dramatic, but accurate, film rendering of the Old Testament. In 1990, Kirch joined forces with Ettore Bernabei, owner of the Italian production company, Lux, who had been formulating similar plans for a video Bible.

TNT bought the North American rights to “Abraham” just before filming began, along with an option for the rest of the series. Since then, TNT has committed to the next two installments, “Jacob” and “Joseph,” which will begin production soon in Morocco for airing next year.

After all the months of preparation and production, portraying the man who is regarded as the father of two of the world’s great religions, Harris has given serious thought to the story of Abraham and the events that follow in the Old Testament. Asked if he believes they are true, he responds with his own story about walking along the beach one early morning with a close friend in Wales.

He speaks of the mist, the smell of seaweed on the sand, the sound of seagulls, the receding tide and how, after more than an hour of walking in silence he turned to his friend and said, “Whether there is a God or not, he certainly was a great idea.”

Harris returns to the question at hand. “Do I think the Old Testament is true? I don’t care. But it was a great idea. And it’s an idea that with patience, and with faith, we should embrace.”

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