(RNS3-MAR05) Christopher Egan plays David Shepherd and Allison Miller plays Michelle Benjamin in NBC’s new drama, “Kings,” which is based on the life of the Bible’s King David. For use with RNS-KINGS-TV, transmitted March 5, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Eric Liebowitz/NBC Universal.

(RNS3-MAR05) Christopher Egan plays David Shepherd and Allison Miller plays Michelle Benjamin in NBC’s new drama, “Kings,” which is based on the life of the Bible’s King David. For use with RNS-KINGS-TV, transmitted March 5, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Eric Liebowitz/NBC Universal.

(UNDATED) There’s something almost biblical about the epic scope of “Kings,” the ambitious NBC drama that premiered Sunday night (March 15). Almost? Maybe that’s because this series is a contemporary retelling of the David and Goliath story.

It’s contemporary but not compelling. Drearily paced and thematically heavy-handed, the clunky newcomer weighs down the hopeful viewer with languid performances and leaden dialogue. You drag yourself from scene to scene, stumbling over pretentious pronouncements.

“Kings” also earns the “almost biblical” designation because, even though the Bible is its basic plot source, one key player seems to be missing: God.

I’m not suggesting that each episode of this or any other series play like the Billy Graham Crusade. What I am suggesting is that one of the most intriguing aspects of the Book of Samuel narrative is the wonderfully human David’s relationship with God. It’s, uh, kind of the basis of the whole story.

Remove that from the David story, and it’s no longer really the David story. And it goes a long way to make David the uninteresting, emotionally flat character played by Chris Egan in “Kings.”

Egan’s David Shepherd (get it?) is a young soldier in Gilboa, a fictional 21st-century country ruled by King Silas (Ian McShane, who ruled HBO’s “Deadwood” as the magnificently profane Al Swearengen). The Goliath of this series is a monstrous tank used by Gilboa’s enemy, the neighboring nation of Gath.

Against orders, David crosses enemy lines, defeats Goliath and rescues the king’s son, Jack Benjamin (Sebastian Stan). It makes him an overnight hero and a favorite of the king.

“We created an alternate world, so it’s a world that feels very familiar,” executive producer and director Francis Lawrence told critics in Los Angeles. “We shot it in New York, but we changed the landscape and we sort of built everything from the ground up … and decided what are all the little details that you need to change in a world that makes it feel different yet still familiar so that it’s relatable.”

What makes a weekly series relatable are characters recognizable as three-dimensional human beings. These are in short supply on the Gilboan landscape.

Only the ever-dependable McShane adds some badly needed life to these ponderous proceedings, and the producers don’t even have the sense to turn him loose on a regular basis.

“It’s good to be king, for a while,” McShane said. “Like all kings, he thinks he’s benevolent and wonderful and great. But, like all people in power, it all, of course, corrupts. And there’s always somebody else who’s younger, better and funnier around the corner, which in this case happens to be Mr. Egan.”

Except, in this case, the character played by Mr. Egan isn’t funnier, livelier or more engaging. He’s a pale pretender to the crown.

Egan, though, is struggling with the heaviest burden of all. He is being asked to play a David in name only. He is stuck in a “Kings” that desperately wants to have it both ways: biblical, but hold the religion.

“This is not a religious show,” Lawrence said. “One of the things that attracted me is it’s the classic hero journey.”

That’s classic Hollywood doublespeak. Sure, a religious show probably wouldn’t work any better than one that’s “not a religious show.” But then why do the David story? Why go to the Bible just to be “almost biblical”? By taking this route, “Kings” has created a royal problem for itself.

(Mark Dawidziak is the television critic for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)