Jesus of Nazareth – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 6 (UK)
8 x 40 minute episodes

First broadcast on Sunday 12 February 1956, this BBC children’s serial was the first full-length reportage of the life of Jesus Christ to be created for television.

Starring Tom Fleming as Jesus, the show was treated as an experiment and placed in the children’s programmes on Sundays, but it attracted an adult audience.

The series began with Jesus as a boy of twelve living in an occupied country and travelling with his parents, Mary (Gwendolyn Watford) and Joseph (George Woodbridge), to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and ended with his death and Resurrection.

The script by Joy Harrington (who also produced the series) was written in consultation with the Reverend Robert C Walton, head of schools’ religious broadcasting, and the Reverend R McKay (the BBC’s head of religious broadcasting) as an adviser.

Episodes were presented in a straightforward manner with little emphasis on the miraculous.

Some exterior sequences were shot on location in Palestine, although the episodes were mostly broadcast live from the BBC’s Ealing studios.

Jesus
Tom Fleming
John the Baptist
Peter Wyngarde
Pontius Pilate
Alan Wheatley
Matthew
Robert Gillespie
John
Michael Bryant
Simon 
Powys Thomas
Judas Iscariot
Anthony Jacobs
James
Richard Grant
Andrew
John Glen
Philip
Philip Guard
Thomas
John Dunbar
Simon Zealot
Jack Stewart
Nathaniel Bartholomew
Hugh Dickson
James Alphaus
John Baker
Thaddeus
Alan Rolfe
Caiaphas
Ewen Solon
Mary
Gwendolyn Watford
Joseph
George Woodbridge
Jesus as a Boy
Richard Palmer
Narrator
John Glen