Now is the time in Hollywood when broadcast networks decide what shows TV audiences will want to watch in the season starting in September. Judging from several comedy and drama pilots under consideration, America’s couches will be turning into pews.
A splashy drama called “Book of Daniel” is in development at NBC, while CBS is building a supernatural thriller around a character described as “a brilliant physicist with strong religious beliefs.”
Fox, meanwhile, has “Briar+Graves,” which the producers describe as “The X-Files” goes to church.
It’s the television industry’s answer to the cash-generating power of biblical stories put through a pop-culture spin cycle.
“We try in the entertainment business to find veins of interest to tap, and religion is a huge one that is currently very underserved,” said Kevin Reilly, entertainment president at NBC, which is set to begin airing “Revelations.”
Also weighing heavily on programming executives’ minds is President Bush’s re-election. In addition to giving religion a starring role, several shows this development season are set deep inside “red” states and feature ultraconservative characters in the mix.
Are networks taking a wrong turn on the highway to heaven? Some media buyers think so. In an effort to give the new religion-themed shows the kind of sizzle that draws the young viewers advertisers covet, writers and producers are spicing them up with elements that are likely to offend at least a few conservatives.
In “Book of Daniel,” for example, actor Aidan Quinn plays a pill-popping Episcopal priest who has the ability to talk about his drug addiction with a hip, modern-day Jesus. The show is still a work in progress, but for now Quinn’s character also is dealing with a daughter arrested for selling marijuana, a brother-in-law who embezzles money from the church and is found murdered, and a gay son.
Fox’s “Briar+Graves” goes further: It is the story of a hard-drinking, gun-toting excommunicated priest who has sworn to battle evil in the name of God. Along the way, he teams up with a neurologist who is in the process of examining her own beliefs.
“While churchgoing viewers might initially embrace a drama with Jesus at the center, an edgier execution could drive them away very fast,” warned John Rash of the media-buying agency Campbell Mithun.
Despite the bravado, some development executives concede they’re struggling to figure out how to make religion and a conservative sensibility part of a programming world where the goal is to attract younger viewers. Hunting for a drama with religion as a hook, executives at 20th Century Fox Television last fall developed a series called “Point Pleasant,” about a teenager who is the daughter of the devil. It flopped: Fox canceled the series recently, citing, among other problems, the show’s failure to mesh teen lust with spirituality.
CBS has had its own problems with “Joan of Arcadia,” the Emmy Award-nominated series about a teenager who can talk to God. Ratings dropped sharply this season after writers diluted the show’s religious theme in an episode suggesting the central character couldn’t actually talk to God but was just hearing voices.
Now, CBS is pulling the story line in the opposite direction: A second character who really can talk with God will be added in the season finale.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
