A television adaptation of a seminal book from the Bible may not be the most promising fare, but this two-part miniseries, which runs on Monday and Tuesday, is a surprisingly worthy effort. It certainly beats the pants off Cecil B. DeMille’s cheese festival, which featured the iconic Charlton Heston as a kind of ironman Moses. And it even appears in a few places to take religion seriously, which is more than can be said of most such epics.

There’s plenty of showbiz hooey here, of course, including what can be only described as extreme makeup; in the early going, especially, the Land of the Pharaohs threatens to become the Land of Maybelline. An apparently rabid soothsayer chews the scenery and a good deal more while interpreting the Pharaoh’s doom-filled dream. And by the time Omar Sharif toddles on screen as a wizened Jethro, chockfull of shtick, you might be tempted to turn the dial. Patience, however, is fruitful. There’s more here than initially meets the eye.

Apart from Mr. Sharif – and even he grows on you, albeit fungus-like – the cast is mostly British and first-rate. Dougray Scott, an accomplished stage performer who never appears to be slumming, is a particularly interesting choice to play Moses. Because the Bible is usually more interested in story than in character, writers and actors actually have considerable freedom in shaping and impersonating their roles. Mr. Scott makes a decidedly sensitive Moses, full of self-doubt at first, and driven, literally, by his implacable God. It’s a risky approach and, occasionally, it fails; Mr. Scott’s anguished eyes can call to mind Gethsemane rather than Sinai. But in general this is a commendable performance. In “conversing” with his Creator, Mr. Scott is not unlike Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” – intimate, argumentative, often bewildered. He even brings some humor into play when, after providing manna to his chronically disgruntled flock, he remarks that, “In a few days they will be complaining that they have to bend to pick it (bread) up.”

Padma Lakshmi is a stunning presence as Bithia, the Egyptian princess who adopts the infant Moses after finding his basket in the Nile. It’s an underwritten and, consequently undemanding role, but she manages to be both convincing and touching. It’s anyone’s guess why she is wearing less mascara than the pharaoh, but in her case it would be hard to improve on what nature has provided. The great Claire Bloom, practically unrecognizable under her own heavy paint, plays Bithia’s mother with a fine sense of worldly cynicism. Bithia’s other son, Menerith, is played by Naveen Andrews, currently featured on the ABC series “Lost,” but formerly the lead in the BBC’s celebrated “The Buddha of Suburbia.” He brings believable pathos and wistfulness to his role as a man who loves and respects Moses, but whose devotion to military duty transcends the corruption of the regime he serves. The cast is rounded out with the always-dependable Linus Roache, as Aaron, Moses’s natural brother, and Mia Maestro, an Argentine newcomer, who plays Zipporah, the wife Moses abandons to follow God’s plan.

It is a tribute to the producers of this “Ten Commandments” that they make no effort to conceal or distort the sometimes painful realities of a serious religion, which can make equally serious, even harsh, demands of its adherents. Unlike Yvonne DeCarlo’s Zipporah, who in DeMille-land was comforting Charlton Heston’s Moses into old age, this Zipporah quite understandably demands to know why Moses is sending both her and their young son packing. Moses is forced to admit that there is just no room for them when God demands his full attention. Later in the film, when enemies are defeated and no prisoners are taken, Moses ascribes the decision to slay the defeated to God’s will. Earlier, Moses appears to be in pain when Menerith asks him if he would murder a brother if God told him to, but the pain suggests the certainty of the answer. There is no effort to prettify this God, whom Moses describes as periodically angry and unpredictable. Tough love is what’s on offer here, a muscular monotheism.

The director, Robert Dornhelm, shot his film in Morocco, in a sepia palette of dusty and washed-out earth tones – suggesting yet another contrast with the garish Technicolor of DeMille. He uses spectacle when absolutely necessary, as in the parting of the Red Sea. But generally he prefers a more human scale. Battle scenes and orgies are kept to a minimum and are not nearly as lurid as is customary. The script is by Ron Hutchison, who wrote the movie “Traffic,” and has far fewer clunkers than the usual sword-and-sandal epic; likewise, the voice of the narrator is lower-key and less pompous than the norm. In these ways, “The Ten Commandments” rises above the usual limitations of the genre, providing both entertainment and, every so often, something to think about.