Conservatives can’t get enough of “The Bible”

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:49:00 +0000

Where have I seen this before? Moses realizing his calling, leading his people, parting the Red Sea (only this time with CGI assistance); Samson, falling for Delilah; King David, marching as to war; Jesus (yet another fine-looking white guy), breathless, sexy, mouthing his beatitudes before suffering on the cross; and much, much more. Admittedly, I had not seen Noah (portrayed here by an actor with a fine Scottish brogue) deliver some of the key Creation verses from Genesis on film before, but that prologue was a nice touch for what was, and is, to come.

Yes, it’s time for another generation to take its stab at filming the biblical epics. This time it comes in full ten-hour miniseries form and with rather apocalyptic hopes placed on its success.

The Bible debuted on The History Channel last night (right before The Vikings, another full-blown historical epic miniseries—the little bit I happened to see of it featured some torrid sex scenes). Reality TV producer Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice) credits his wife Roma Downey (formerly of Touched by an Angel, here playing Mary, mother of Jesus, in the film) with inspiring the idea for the film:

Is “The Bible” comfort TV?

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:50:00 +0000

The first part of the History Channel’s miniseries “The Bible” was watched by 13.1 million people on Sunday night. This is a huge number, another shiv in the guts of network television. As the New York Times noted, it is double the number of viewers who watched anything on NBC last month, and even more people than watch “The Walking Dead,” another cable show that makes network TV executives drool.

The success of “The Bible” is and is not surprising. That’s a huge audience, and a huge audience for a bad series — plodding, stiff, dull, God-is-a-white-guy-with-sandy-blond-hair kind of bad. But it has been demonstrated before that there is a huge market for religious-based, evangelical-leaning entertainments, of which “The Bible” is clearly one. (Mark Burnett, the producer of “Survivor” and a very canny finder of eyeballs, is one of the series’ producers.) Part of the reason the series is so middling is that it is explicitly constructed not to offend this demographic: It isn’t even serious about all of the crises of faith chronicled in the actual Bible, because that would require elucidating ... crises of faith.

Salon.com > the history channel

Conservatives can’t get enough of “The Bible”

Is “The Bible” comfort TV?