Starz's Medieval miniseries, "The Pillars of the Earth" (9 p.m. Central, Friday; half a star) has done the impossible. It's made Ian McShane (temporarily) uninteresting.

[img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e20133f26b5ef9970b-200wi[/img] Water running uphill, the sun rising in the West, McShane unable to project his usual charismatic presence: These are all thing I did not think were possible. But the sloppy, choppy "Pillars" has rendered the actor ineffective. And that's just the worst of its crimes.

The book on which "Pillars" is based, a doorstop of a novel by Ken Follett that traces the construction of a cathedral in England, has it share of flaws. It's sometimes talky or clunky and its characters can seem wooden, but on the whole, it gets the job done. You may get more than you wanted to know on the mechanics of building a
cathedral, but you'll also get insights into why people spent their
precious resources constructing them. And as the novel picks up momentum, you get sucked into the saga of Tom the Builder and Prior Philip, a holy but headstrong monk. All in all, what the novel lacks in grace it makes up with sturdy construction and earnest intentions.

It's hard to say what the intentions of the "Pillars" miniseries are. Many events rush by at such hurtling speed that they fail to have any impact. And before you can care about what happens to this group of striving people, they have to come alive as individuals. Nothing about the slipshod writing or frenetic direction makes these people compelling, and some of them come across as downright cartoonish.

[img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e20133f26b656d970b-200wi[/img] The cast looks positively stranded, almost off-balance, as if they were never allowed a chance to get their bearings and dig into their characterizations. Rufus Sewell, who plays Tom, and Matthew Macfayden, who plays Philip, are solid actors, but for this enterprise to work, you have to understand why master-mason Tom loves building so much and where Philip's deep and abiding faith comes from. There are glancing attempts to illuminate those motivations in the script, but they're inelegant and insufficient and give the actors little to work with.

Donald Sutherland, who plays a nobleman, has little impact, but it's the criminal misuse of McShane that is truly bewildering. As I read the book recently, I thought the role of the ambitious, cunning cleric Waleran Bigod would offer McShane much in the way of juicy villainy. But "Pillars" fails to make Waleran the spidery menace that he is in the book. McShane does what he can with the material, but there's little to build on here.

If you read "The Pillars of the Earth," don't expect a masterpiece, but you will get a reasonably decent yarn and you'll learn how and why these towering monuments to faith came to be built. If you watch the miniseries, you'll see precious raw materials wasted and shoddy construction everywhere you look. The fact that good scenes and character moments from the book are poorly executed or changed beyond recognition in the miniseries just adds insult to injury. 

I'd hoped that "Pillars" would be a decent stopgap until the arrival of "Game of Thrones," HBO's upcoming saga of knights, battles and courtly intrigue. Alas, your time would be much better spent reading "Thrones" or "Pillars" -- and hoping that McShane's next TV gig is worthy of his spectacular talents.
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