At Oxford, Oscar Wilde had a gay old time aphorising into the early hours. He failed to do any Greek, and his professor, the Reverend Spooner, begetter of the Spooner-ism “Christianity is a completely different lay of wife” called him in for a test in front of a board of classics tutors so that they could expel him.

Wilde had to translate the selling of Jesus by Judas in Matthew’s Gospel. Wilde began to read the Easter story perfectly. After a few minutes, the thwarted Spooner said that that would be all. Wilde continued. “That will be all, Mr Wilde,” Spooner repeated. Still, Wilde went on. “Will you stop now?” shouted the furious Spooner. Wilde looked up as if hearing him for the first time: “Sorry, do you mind if I carry on? I want to see how it ends up for the poor chap.”

Knowing how it ends is only one of the problems with the translation of the agony and mystery of Christianity into television costume drama. Because, although it comes out all hallelujahs and hosannas for us believers, with the excuse to build gothic cathedrals and tell actress and bishop jokes, as a drama, it’s a bit of a fizzler: a parable without a punch line, or, indeed, much of a punch. Commando revolutionary enters capital to stir up patriotic fervour with hardcore buddies. Whacks moneylenders. Chats up good-time girl. Wins argument with quisling. So far, so good. Then, he gets captured, humiliated, tortured and nailed to a tree. The bankers go back to the temple, the Romans back to government and the quisling’s still in charge.

Dramatically, that’s all wrong. What they need is a rescue after the humiliation bit. Peter and the SAS apostles swoop in. Then it’s no more Mr Nice Guy, a bit less gospel, a bit more Rambo. Finally, Jesus and Mary Magdalene ride a donkey into the desert. She wisecracks: “So, Son of Man, you gonna make a girl wait three days before you rise again?”

Another problem for every religious adaptation is literalism. The detail obscures. The more real, the more authentic, the less believable. Mysticism can’t be shown; fact hides spiritual truth. Most religions understand this and use elaborate imagery and metaphor; watching this kitsch mimicry of Christ telling parables rather misses the lesson implicit in a parable.

But the final reason Gospel adaptations don’t work is because, stylistically, first-century Judea is the worst look ever. Nighties and hippie beards and mad hats. Who’d ever go to Jews for style advice? And for this, we can only blame God. Perhaps it’s a humility thing. Renaissance painters got round it by dressing everybody as 15th-century Florentines - much sexier. This year’s BBC HBO Ecumenical Easter offering, The Passion (Sunday, Monday, Friday, BBC1), was as ponderous and respectfully timid and dramatically neutered as they invariably are, suffering from the usual hammy naming of parts. “Have you met Joseph of Arimathea?” Mark: “You still think like a tax man.” Judas: “What on earth’s in your heart?”

Jesus is traditionally played by an unknown actor. It is also the convention that you will never ever see him again, except for Robert Powell, who then had to spend purgatory playing a policeman with Jasper Carrott. Other parts, of course, can be played by stars - who could ever forget John Wayne’s Centurion? Here, James Nesbitt washed his hands as Pilate. He looked a particular prat in a Roman miniskirt and sandals, though the Northern Irish accent did bring a certain hint of religious bigotry and violence to the role. Pilate is a hopelessly poisoned chalice for an actor.

Like Judas, his badness is predestined by a good God, thereby offering up the eternal dichotomy of Easter.

Thank you to all of you who have bothered to phone and e-mail me to say how much James Nesbitt hates me. I once said he was the laziest actor on television, and he seems to have minded. He isthe laziest actor on television, but that does not make him a bad one. I loved his Jekyll and Hyde. There are plenty of actors who work their little Stanislavsky socks off being simply ghastly, but even though he got his Pilate out of the Yellow Pages, he’s still immensely watchable. I’m waiting for that role that is more than just one off the cuff, but, for now, I’ll turn the other cheek and wish him well for Easter.

Staying with the contradictory nature of Pilate’s role, the oldest church in the world, the Ethiopian Coptic one, canonised Pilate as a saint. His feast day is June 25. I was going to say not a lot of people know that, but actually there are 15m Copts.

Talking of lazy actors, Harry H Corbett, who played Harold Steptoe, was one of the laziest. His career is a cautionary proverb from black-and-white television that acting on the small screen is the ruination of serious careers. The initial H stood for “H’anything” and was inserted to differentiate him from the man who stuck his hand up Sooty. Following the grim and brilliant Fantabulosa, the sad life of Kenneth Williams, BBC4 has commissioned a series on the sad lives of 1960s and 1970s comedians. It looks set to be the most miserable series of the spring. How long can you put off wanting to watch David Walliams as Frankie Howerd? Ten years? A hundred? Indefinitely?

Galton and Simpson were arguably the greatest writers of sitcoms, and Steptoe and Son was their finest creation. I still think it’s the funniest, most poignant and beautifully written comedy ever shown on television, but it was 10 grim years for everyone involved - except the audience. Corbett and Wilfrid Bramble hated each other and finally never spoke outside the script. Bramble was a closet gay alcoholic who couldn’t learn his lines. Corbett had been called the English Marlon Brando. Mind you, being called the English anybody American was the moniker of death. Diana Dors was the English Marilyn Monroe and Cliff Richard the English Elvis. Both Bramble and Corbett despised their fame, resented the medium and suffered huge bouts of thespian self-pity. Neither worked much after Steptoe. Corbett died at 57 of a heart attack in Hastings. Hastings somehow makes it worse.

This biopic, The Curse of Steptoe(Wednesday, BBC4), managed to capture most of the facts nicely, with two believable impressions. What it didn’t show, what it couldn’t show, was the one redeeming component, the thing that made it all worthwhile, Steptoe and Son itself. This is as fine a piece of popular culture as has been compiled by any postwar British actor. What Bramble and Corbett thought of it is in the end neither here nor there, which just goes to show another eternal truth – that actors make utterly useless critics, particularly about themselves.

While on careers that have been flushed round the u-bend of ambition, I offer you Donald Sutherland, who has plunged from the Parnassian heights of Klute and Don’t Look Now to Dirty Sexy Money(Friday, C4). He has never been typecast, yet, for the past 40 years, he has brought an identical menacing overcapped grin to a bewildering role call of duff characters in forgettable films, ending up with this dire plutocrat. Rich family dramas seem to be fashionable in the States at the moment. This one is Sidney Sheldon meets Jeffrey Archer – meretricious, cliché infested, unbelievable and immoral. You may love it. I find something particularly depressing about a drama where money is the sole motivation driving the narrative and the performers.

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette