Love the breathless hype: "bold and surprising storytelling" -- President, NBC Entertainment
With "Integrity" president Susan Russell behind this, the image it will present will likely just accelerate the departures from ECUSA.
(Nagging reliance on painkillers? Is this a Limbaugh reference?)
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. LOL. I'm sure it was a flip of the coin whether it was going to be an Episcopal or a Southern Baptist ...
It seems to me that the reverse is much more common in the Episcopal Church these days -- raving liberal bishops cracking down on orthodox Christian believers...
NBC will surely live up to it's acronyn of "Nothing But Crap" trying to get hold of the evangelical market with this show.
Am I mistaken in thinking that this series has nothing to do with the Book of Daniel in the Bible? One of the Anglican pastors I know, the Canon Rev Loong Kong, said of the Book of Daniel "describing the past and future of the nations, and prophecy illustrating the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven: how religions and nations come and go, and the fulfillment of the Kingdom of Heaven.".
In fact he is one of the few dispensational Anglican pastors/clergies I know. Oh wait, it was a product of another time and the Hong Kong Anglican Church is on another planet when compared with the ECUSA.
Oh, I know very well why. To the "progressive"-oriented TV networks and the "creative" community of TV producers, writers, etc. such orthodox characters are classified as "fundagelicals" and "bigots". If cast on TV at all, they could only be cast as villains.
How long until they have the "Priest" getting a human booster shot from a guy named Molly?
One can only imagine the leftist morality plays in store this season...
Episode 1. Daniel must confront his mixed feeling about whether to be up-front with his congregation about his more than platonic interest in the boys choir.
Episode 4. Daniel's congregation breaks into near civil war when it is revealed that non-organic flour has been used in preparing the Eucharist. This is compounded when parish vegans demand that the liturgy be revised to purge carnal references to body and blood, and instead use the terms tempe and juice.
Episode 6. Zany hijinx break out when Bishop Beatrice reveals that she used to be known as Bob and had once dated Daniel's Mom.
IIRC, the last time the nets had a show about an Episcopal priest, it was a so-called comedy starring Dan Akroyd..anyone else remember..
It's surprising alright... and laughable.
They have it backwards. I don't know of any women bishops who are conservative and the reality is that conservative priests are hounded and persecuted by liberal bishops not the reverse.
>>“It is one more indicator of how much issues of faith and religion are ‘in,’ right now,”<<
Good grief, this "woman playing pastor" just doesn't get it, does she?
Religion is "in"? Whenever was it "out"?
Oh, my! She's a lesbian priestess!!!! I didn't catch that before. What do you expect from the New World Order Broadcasting Company?
I think that my "Father Basil meets Desperate Housewives" plot has much better dramatic possibilities. Maybe they'd do better to flush the gaysbian-gnostic stuff down the toilet and hire me to develop the program concept and write the plot instead!!!!
national Integrity president ........If you have to say it, you don't have it.
With a wink and a nod to Stephen Vincent Benet, Aidan Quinn plays Daniel Webster in the series, an Episcopal priest with a monkey on his back, who regularly converses with a street-smart Jesus (Deadwood’s Garrett Dillahunt). Together, Daniel and Jesus explore family problems, church politics, and Daniel’s addiction to prescription painkillers. It takes the concept of accepting Jesus as your personal savior, well, literally.
Ellyn Burstyn, an Oscar winner for 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, plays Bishop Beatrice Congreve, with whom Daniel butts theological heads. Susanna Thompson (Once and Again) is on board as Daniel’s martini-drinking wife Judith. Alison Pill is their daughter, and Ivan Shaw, their adopted Asian son.
But for gay men, it’s the Webster’s son, Peter (Christian Campbell) who is the page-turning character in Daniel’s book. Not only is Peter Webster gay; he’s a Log Cabin Republican. As the series opens, Peter is nursing a recently broken heart, and still struggling with the long-ago death of his twin brother.
The pulchritudinous, joyously heterosexual Christian Campbell, most recently seen cavorting in a G-string in Showtime’s camp extravaganza Reefer Madness, and currently on the London stage in tick…tick…BOOM!, has been melting gay hearts since 1999’s Trick. The indie picture--in which Campbell played Gabriel, a Sondheim wannabe looking for a place to get it on with his chiseled one-night stand--was the darling of that year’s Sundance Film Festival, and an art house favorite.
Back then, the actor told Prodigy Internet “I was never concerned about playing gay, but my management was.”
In The Book of Daniel, Christian Campbell’s Peter Webster brings something brand new to broadcast, dramatic television: the gay Republican. The only other occasion in recent history when television has offered up a gay Republican was during Election season last year, when the cable network Trio explored how Log Cabin Republicans were splitting over supporting Bush in the one-hour documentary Gay Republicans.