Sure, it’s the end of the world, but do they have to play it this heavy?

Bill Pullman stars as Bill Pullman’s jaw in “Revelations,” which replaces “The West Wing” on NBC Wednesday nights at 9 for the next six weeks, or until the world comes to an end, whichever happens first.

On the show, the apocalypse very much seems nigh, although there are plenty of scientists/realists on hand, none better looking than Pullman’s astrophysicist Dr. Richard Massey, to throw cold, scientific water on the supposed signs of the Second Coming and/or the End of Days. These signs include, in the first 15 minutes, a baby found floating on a piece of ferryboat wreckage in the Adriatic Sea; a vision of Christ on the cross on a mountain in Mexico; and a girl struck down by lightning who, lying in a vegetative state in a Miami hospital, is reciting Latin verse from the Book of Revelation, lines like: “The time is short.”

“Revelations” was conceived months -- if not billions of years -- ago, but the show’s first hour (NBC is calling it an “event series” so you don’t mistake it for a mini) has about it the here-and-now echoes of the Terri Schiavo case, and the post-9/11 general unease Americans have come to know. While we compensate with orange terror alerts, another recess of our brain wonders whether a deus ex machina is around the corner.

“Revelations,” then, arrives as a ham-handed referent for these collective anxieties, which lurk in the background of the show’s grandiose sense of religious intrigue. It’s a sign of how Hollywood is craning its neck at the role religion has played in profitable fictional endeavors such as “The Da Vinci Code” or the “Left Behind” series, both of which no doubt had something to do with this show getting on the schedule.

As part of this emerging genre, “Revelations” feels appropriately slick. The show’s high-end production values make it seem like NBC is giving the gift of a feature film, without the need to validate your parking, and Pullman can deliver a good gallows-humor line. But the series is even more unremittingly self-serious than the better one it’s replacing, “The West Wing,” where last week, in the season finale, we learned that with any luck the country could soon be run by Emmy winners Jimmy Smits and John Spencer.

I suppose it’s the subject -- the end of us -- which doesn’t exactly lend itself to light comedy, or even good weather. “Revelations” begins at the beginning, by which I mean the kind of beginning Hollywood thinks up: Int. College Classroom. A professor, not given to creation theory, is lecturing on the Big Bang. A student raises his hand.

“You talk of science creating and destroying the world,” he says. “Is there no room for God in this equation?”

“I think there’s room in science for everything and everyone,” the professor replies, “including God. If only He would make Himself known.”

If only. Cut to everywhere, it seems, like in a Tom Clancy novel. To a plane bound from Santiago, Chile, to Boston, where onboard we get our first generous glimpse of Pullman’s sardonic squint and fine jaw (he doesn’t say much, so the jaw kind of becomes a character). Dr. Massey, who apparently has some experience chasing Satanists (“I’ve tangled with the opposing team,” he will murmur), has just helped capture his daughter’s killer, a messenger of the Devil who cut out the girl’s heart. Meanwhile, on a bus bound for Mt. Chapulta, Mexico, Sister Josepha Montafiore (Natascha McElhone), who has a posh English accent, is about to find her latest miracle, a vision of Christ cast in nonexistent shadow on a rock face.

Sister Josepha, who is Catholic but who confusingly comes across as a born-again Christian literalist obsessed by the Book of Revelation, works for a foundation. It is the kind of foundation that pays her travel expenses as she searches for signs that the prophecies of the Bible are coming to pass, which is why after Mexico she ends up in Miami, at the bedside of the brain-dead girl speaking the word of God. The hospital and the girl’s father, dismissed as someone who’s drinking (booo!), want to pronounce her dead and harvest her organs; Sister Josepha has other plans, and with a reluctant Dr. Massey they’re able to spirit the girl away to a convent without ever having to appear on CNN or in a Florida district court.

Soon enough, “Revelations” has established Dr. Massey and Sister Josepha as a newfangled Mulder and Scully (he’s a man of science, she’s a woman of faith, together ... ). A coda on the DVD sent to critics includes a voice-over saying that their search for signs that Armageddon is already in play will take them to a Greek island, to Rome, to the Holy Land, to Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee.

I guess you can give away that much plot when the nominal source material is the controversial, variously interpreted last book of the Christian scriptures, and when the essential tension -- is this the final battle between God and Satan, or not? -- remains palpable. Having sat through hours of HBO’s “Carnivale” before reaching the catharsis of a similar, though unresolved, battle between good and evil, I can appreciate Dr. Massey and Sister Josepha’s comparatively streamlined journey.

Created by David Seltzer, who wrote “The Omen” (1976), “Revelations” has plenty of muddled contemporary relevancies -- compellingly weird things happening in Florida, snippets of news footage of war, genocide and satanic murders. But the series, oddly, loses most of its credibility on smaller suspensions of disbelief, comparatively easy stuff like, what exactly does this guy do for a living? And why is there no security line at the Miami airport?

It’s Hollywood, that’s why, where Catholics are more photogenic than the fundamentalist Christians who belong in this story and where all professors work at Harvard. And where the fate of the whole wide world comes down to a good-looking guy and a good-looking girl who need each other as much as the rest of us need them.

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‘Revelations’

Where: NBC

When: 9-10 p.m. Wednesdays

Ratings: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under 14)

Bill Pullman...Dr. Richard Massey

Natascha McElhone...Sister Josepha Montafiore

Michael Massee...Isaiah Haden

Executive producers David Seltzer, Gavin Polone. Writer and creator David Seltzer.