THIS high-budget programme set out to show that the Biblical tale of Moses was based in fact.

But in trying to prove that the baby in the bullrushes, the parting of the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments were not fiction, we were asked to make huge leaps of logic.

War correspondent and former Breakfast presenter Jeremy Bowen was probably asked to present this show to give it some gravitas, but even he didn't seem convinced by the paper-thin arguments.

Just because there was evidence that the pharaohs gave their children good education, we were asked to believe that Moses - a poor orphan - would have been given the same chance when he was rescued from the river by the pharaoh's wife.

The Ten Commandments, written on tablets of stone, were given a half-hearted explanation and then dismissed as one of the great mysteries of our time - hardly a well-considered conclusion. And the plague of frogs and great floods could have been caused by freak weather, but then again they might not have been.

When the theories wore thin, the computer graphics department was let loose, for no other reason than to take our minds off the weak ideas being presented. Whole computer-generated cities were unfurled in front of us - none based on fact, just imagination.

The show ended with an earnest Bowen stating that if anything should come from the Moses story, the warring factions in the modern Middle East should heed the Thou Shalt Not Kill commandment, a crass and sweeping statement to end a contrived and badly executed programme.