While I've not seen any of The Book of Daniel yet - and from what I've read, I don't seem to be missing too much - I have enjoyed watching the contrivoversy unfold as it did for shows like God, the Devil and Bob and Nothing Sacred:
1. Network creates show involving religion that may or may not have elements religious folks and conservatives would objext to.
2. Those groups object anyway.
3. A handful of TV stations refuse to air the show. Network enjoys free publicity.
4. The show tanks, gets cancelled, we forget about the contretemps until some suit decides to repeat step one.
With that in mind, I wonder if it is impossible to create a show that takes a compelling look at contemporary religious issues? To my money the closest candidate was Nothing Sacred, whose depiction of an inner city Catholic parish showed promise when it wasn't trying to do either Issue of the Week or attempt to make star Kevin Anderson TV's hottest priest. It also had the misfortune of airing during the reign of Jamie Tarses at ABC, a woman who never met a show she couldn't cancel.
Other recent attempts haven't fared much better, as anyone who sat through an episode of the nonsensical Revelations could attest. The dueling John Paul II movies earlier this year failed to generate much interest, though it was entertaining to think of Jon Voight playing a pope.
History suggests that we like TV and religion combinations to be unthreatening and vaguely upbeat - hello 7th Heaven and Touched by an Angel - but with some of the great drama that's unspooling across TV sets now, you'd think that we could get one show that's about clerics rather than cops, lawyers, or forensic scientists. On the other hand Father Dowling Mysteries were pretty popular...
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