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TV Gets Religion

March 28, 2005

The Wall Street Journal has an article today about new fall programs that deal with religion. The article TV Gets Religion says:

It's the television industry's answer to the cash-generating power of biblical stories put through a pop-culture spin cycle. Mel Gibson's move "The Passion of the Christ" was one of the top box-office hits last year, and Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" has sold 25 million copies. Meanwhile, author Tim LaHaye's biblical "Left Behind" novels have racked up sales of some $650 million.

Well, now we know the TV industry's motivations - but how are they planning to portray religion? CBS has a new drama with an interesting premise. It is described as a supernatural thriller about "a brilliant physicist with strong religious beliefs." Could they be thinking of Sir John Polkinghorne? Sir Polkinghorne, is a British physicist who did brilliant work calculating the paths of quantum particles and quarks, than left it all to become an Anglican priest. He has since written and spoken frequently about matters of science and faith. One of his best known works is The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker.
This month Ken Myers has a great interview with Sir John Polkinghorne.
So will CBS look to Sir John for inspiration? Doubtful, here is a subnopsis of NBC's entry to the newly religious fall TV season, "Book of Daniel":

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 Mr. 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.