Has the worst show of 2009 already arrived?

Every once in a while, something comes along that is so abjectly awful, such a powerful affront to your intelligence, that you want to sing its praises to the heavens. You want to take a stopwatch and chart - on a micro-second-by-micro-second level - how it fails on every level, and why virtually everyone associated with it deserves never to get work in the industry ever again.

But then, you realize that that's hardly worth the effort, and that no one would ever bother to read the thing anyway, so you drag out your dullest butter knife and saw away sloppily on its gullet. Which brings us, ladies and gentlemen, to NBC's miniseries "The Last Templar."

Herewith, our review:

"The Last Templar's" unpromisingly obscure title is the least of its problems. Produced by Robert Halmi, Sr., who has churned out scores of these big, dumb behemoths over his long and storied career (to be fair, he's made some quite decent productions, as well, though perhaps by accident), this NBC miniseries is not just cheesy but an entire cheese factory.

Its "Indiana Jones"-meets-"The Da Vinci Code" storyline routinely strains credibility (it buys into the silly trope that archaeologists are more adventurers and mercenaries rather than scholars) yet nonetheless remains stultifyingly predictable. It also assiduously manages to avoid anything resembling a credible human moment.

It stars Mira Sorvino - when an actor finds herself at this point in her career, does the fact that she has an Oscar serve as solace or a cruel taunt? - as Tess, an archaeologist and single mom who has given up that rough-and-tumble world to care for her daughter. She's given such coquettish lines as, "Do you remember that parasite I had in my foot in Africa?"

At the opening of a display of Vatican treasures at a New York museum, a quartet of men dressed as knights appear, behead a cop and run roughshod through the exhibit, trashing the place and helping themselves to sundry antiquities.

While the cops stand around, staring at each other stupidly, Tess leaps into action: "Hey! Come back here! That doesn't belong to you!" she calls out, then chases after them in her stilettos.

Of course, the cops persecute her for possessing such spunk and vinegar, but at least that allows her an opportunity to meet-cute with FBI Agent Daley (Scott Foley), whose colleague leeringly says of Tess, "She can dig through my priceless artifacts any day." (This is what passes for wit in a Robert Halmi production.)

This is parlayed into an unlikely globe-trotting quest to discover treasures lost centuries ago by the Knights Templar, artifacts some at the Vatican would prefer remain lost to history, and don't mind killing people to ensure they stay that way. While the contents of that treasure offer vague intrigue, the far bigger mystery is: Who continues to give Halmi money to churn out these turgid insults to our intelligence?

Though Tess routinely humiliates and abandons Daley, even seemingly leaving him for dead, he remains blitheringly smitten. Plot contrivances mount until Tess finds herself in Greece, where she encounters Omar Sharif, who babbles in Zen Koans for Dummies.

As the cosmic Jed Clampett, he earnestly informs Tess, "Life brings life, joy brings joy and hope brings hope." All well and good, but while watching this, you're more likely to want to know: What does misery bring?

Sorvino reportedly broke several teeth while making "The Last Templar." Sounds pretty painful, but I can beat that: I actually had to watch it.

- "The Last Templar:" 9 p.m. - nah, really: Don't bother.