What exactly is it about the saga of Elvis Presley’s life that compels it to be told, again and again, in movies and on television? Hollywood treats the singer’s biography as the pop-culture equivalent of the Holocaust – a story that must be repeated for every generation so that it will never be forgotten. I feel as though I’ve seen so many actors in pompadour helmets walk through the door of Sun Records in Memphis, clutching a handful of quarters to record their first demo, that I could find the place myself without a map.

I’m willing to admit that, to millions of Americans, Elvis probably remains an icon, though somehow I doubt his hold on the television audience continues to rival the ratings he pulled down for Ed Sullivan on September 9, 1956, when he shattered records in his first appearance on the CBS variety show. I suppose it’s possible that CBS will now reap rewards with its new sweeps miniseries, “Elvis,” that yet again pores over Elvis’s rise to fame in minute detail. But nearly three decades after his death, you have to wonder whether the abundant resources CBS has poured into this project might have been better spent on the re-telling of a less-examined life – perhaps the story of Jesus, for example.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy parts of “Elvis,” which begins this Sunday night at 9:00 p.m.and continues the following Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. The performance of Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Elvis charmed me completely; his scrawny body and soft voice did wonders as a stage-setting device for the performer’s eventual decline. It’s a thankless job to follow in the footsteps of so many others, including the memorable Elvis interpretation by Kurt Russell in the 1979 TV movie “Elvis” directed by future horrormeister John Carpenter. Mr. Rhys Meyers lacks Mr. Russell’s then spooky physical resemblance to Elvis, but you have to admire his ability to in habit his spirit – especially in the latter parts of Part One, in which the young performer first copes with the pains of fame. Alas, neither Mr. Rhys Meyers nor his stunt double could ever quite master the hip shaking that became Elvis’s trademark.

The problem with this “Elvis” doesn’t lay in the performances – especially not with the terrific supporting turn of Randy Quaid as Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s bizarre manager and puppet-master. It suffers instead from a lack of nerve. The story is framed by a night in 1968 when Elvis had to face his declining fortunes head-on; the Colonel has booked him on a TV special designed to resuscitate his career. Toward the end of Part Two – just as we’re beginning to hope for scenes of a bloated Elvis wasting away his twilight years in Graceland – it becomes clear that this 1968 special will mark the end point of the miniseries, meant to foreshadow future events without putting them on wretched display. I suspect that most viewers will be disappointed not to see Mr. Rhys Meyers strung out on barbiturates and junk food behind the gates of his Memphis mansion, left to die by an industry no longer in need of his services.

Given the fact that CBS plans to follow the miniseries with some new home footage of Elvis provided by the Presley family, it seems clear that the network traded access for honesty in its retelling of the Elvis myth. Maybe its strategy will work; slapping the name “Elvis” on a four-hour miniseries might just attract enough of an audience to justify the cost. But it seems somewhat dishonest to use the singer’s name to market so limited a look into his biography. I don’t mind a sympathetic portrait of Elvis to add to his endless bibliography, but I would have admired CBS more had they found a way to weave his prodigious weaknesses more thoroughly into the narrative. I have no doubt Mr. Rhys Meyers would have risen to the challenge – as would a TV audience already familiar with the true story of Elvis’s tragic demise. In an era where tawdry realism and tabloid history fills so much of prime-time programming, the story of Elvis Presley seems an odd place for CBS to draw the line in favor of a whitewash. I liked Part One and Part Two of this miniseries; the problem is the missing Part Three.

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NBC’s “The Office” finished its six episode run last week, and dismal ratings suggest that it may never return. That’s a loss for American television; the show worked. Had there never been a predecessor, NBC’s version might well have been hailed as one of the breakthrough comedies of our time. And to its credit, the American series quickly found its own voice, more cynical than its British counterpart and yet in some ways more winning, too. The episode devoted to an intra-office basketball game revealed Michael Scott, the office manager, as a demented, hateful jerk – stepping over the line drawn by Ricky Gervais, co-creator and star of the original, who always strived for acceptance by his subordinates in its previous incarnation. I’ll give credit, for once, to NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker for allowing “The Office” a place on American television, but only so I can blame him when he cancels it later this month. Sustaining Mr. Zucker’s uniquely atrocious taste in television remains NBC’s no. 1 programming priority.