I am of the generation that grew up believing that Robert Powell was Jesus. This is because in my day you knew Easter was around the corner not because of the bastardised diffusion lines of Creme Eggs infesting the supermarkets (White chocolate? Caramel? Come on!), but because the TV schedules suddenly filled with truth ’n’ resurrection-based programming, central to which was the annual showing of Franco Zeffirelli’s four-part 1977 series Jesus of Nazareth. Powell played the Messiah and anyone else who was anyone in 1977 (Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quinn, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Peter Ustinov, Michael York, you name it) played the rest of the cast of the Bible. It was as much part of the season as making palm crosses at school or egg-hunting in the garden.
It is possibly still available somewhere out there in the fragmentary world of streaming, if you want to unearth it from underneath the secular detritus at a suitable moment. But it’s not the same as when it’s featured in terrestrial TV’s regularly scheduled seasonal programming.
