NEW YORK (AP) ¿ Christianity got it all wrong. In Marie Phillips' first novel, "Gods Behaving Badly'', there's no omnipotent God who steers the universe according to his or her purposes. There's no heaven for the virtuous, nor hell for the wicked. The whole Christian story, from Old Testament to New, is flatly false.

But this isn't another fashionable polemic against religious faith. Phillips isn't taking shots at Christians or cheering up atheists, as in "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins or "God Is Not Great" by the curmudgeonly Christopher Hitchens. As the title suggests, her book has gods aplenty; they're just of the ancient Greek variety.

Her main characters are Artemis, Aphrodite, Apollo, et al., but Phillips sets the gods in modern-day London. Come down in the world since their days on Mount Olympus, the gods are now crammed together in a run-down town house where they continue their eternal squabbles and plotting.

Phillips has given each of the gods appropriately modern ¿ and fairly unimaginative ¿ occupations: Aphrodite, goddess of love, works as a phone sex operator; Dionysus, god of wine, runs a nightclub; Artemis, goddess of the hunt, walks dogs for a living.

As for why the diminished deities have taken up residence in London, there's no serious explanation, only a brief mention of 17th-century real estate values after the plague. The obvious explanation is that Phillips lives in London herself and finds it charming to imagine the ancient gods dealing with the tedium of big-city life. The gates to the underworld, for example, open at Angel tube station, surely an inside joke for regular subway riders. (The novel was first published in England earlier this year.)

The setup alone seems an obvious vehicle for satire, a chance to make fun of the quotidian modern world, with its crummy town houses, crowded subway stations and dog walkers. But it never really gets there. "Gods Behaving Badly" has an erudite pedigree, but it never tries to be more than a well-told popcorn fantasy.

The plot is based on the story of Orpheus, who descended into the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice. In "Gods Behaving Badly'', our hero is the mousy and modest Neil, an unlikely hero who goes to Hades to bring back his beloved, an even mousier housekeeper named Alice who was killed by a lightning bolt from Zeus.

There is some decent writing here, particularly as the story gathers momentum in the second half, but "Gods Behaving Badly" isn't exactly a novel in the proper sense. It seems explicitly designed for a second life as a screenplay. In fact, you can find a YouTube clip of Phillips talking about which actors she imagines playing the roles. ("Catherine Zeta-Jones IS the goddess of love. Coming soon to a theater near you!")

No surprise, then, when it was announced last month that Ben Stiller has optioned the novel to develop a comedy series for television. "Gods Behaving Badly" isn't a perfect book, but its best qualities ¿ light comedy and sexy deities ¿ might be perfect for prime-time TV.

¦ "Gods Behaving Badly" (Little, Brown and Company, 288 pages. $23.99), by Marie Phillips