Authors tend to avoid reviewing other products for fear of mixed motives. But I cannot resist shouting from the roof tops about The Essential Jesus.

While advertisements on London buses say: 'Theres probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life, the carefree sentiment doesn't ring true in the day-to-day life.

King of Kings remains the bench-mark in many respects for large-scale retellings of the life of Jesus. It clearly demonstrates everything that can go right and wrong with visual reproduction of the Gospel story.

The archetypical blue-eyed Jesus played by Max Von Sydow, from whom so many Hollywood stereotypes emerge. In this dreary production Jesus is so different from those who surrounds him that he is almost alien, and his pronouncements so super-spiritual that they are almost of no earthly use.

The story of Brian, a well-meaning Jew from AD 33 mistaken as the Messiah.

It is fairly clear that the director of this production sat Bruce Marchiano down and told him to laugh and smile at every opportunity – even the inappropriate ones. The Jesus that emerges is a thoroughly likeable human being whom grandmothers would most likely describe as 'lovely'. How he manages to wreck the Temple is anyone's guess.

The Visual Bible's presentation of the Gospel of John is probably one of the best cinematic presentations of Jesus available today, but its problems are those that relate directly to its topic matter.

All four Gospel narratives are used as source material to bring to the screen Christ's passion – the physical, spiritual, and mental suffering of Jesus in the hours prior to and including his trial and execution by crucifixion.