TV channeling the afterlife
PUSSSYKATT
Mercury News
In the first episode of CBS's upcoming ``Joan of Arcadia,'' God appears to
teenage Joan Girardi in the form of a good-looking male high school student.
``Why are you appearing to me?'' asks the rather perplexed Joan.
``I'm not appearing to you,'' God replies. ``You're seeing me.''
This season, television -- like Joan -- will be seeing a lot of God -- or at
least some kind of higher power.
``Joan of Arcadia'' is a twist on the Joan of Arc story, as is the Fox
midseason show ``Wonderfalls,'' in which a greater power speaks to a sullen
young woman through such inanimate objects as a plastic lion. HBO's
``Carnivale,'' set in a traveling circus during the Depression, riffs on John
Milton's epic ``Paradise Lost,'' dealing with nothing less than the ultimate
battle between good and evil.
In Fox's ``Tru Calling,'' a young woman will be able to save the lives of those
who died before their time. ``Still Life,'' another midseason drama on Fox, is
a variation on Alice Sebold's novel ``The Lovely Bones,'' with a lead character
who has been dead for more than a year. And on Showtime's ``Dead Like Me,'' a
self-absorbed teenager dies in a freak accident and becomes a grim reaper,
grappling daily with death and the afterlife.
Religion, spirituality, belief in a higher power and mortality are not new
themes on television. Some very good current series -- ``Six Feet Under,''
``The Simpsons,'' ``The West Wing'' -- deal regularly and effectively with
issues of faith. So did such now-departed shows as ``Picket Fences.'' A few
past series -- 1997's ``Nothing Sacred,'' which dealt rather frankly with
conflicts within the Catholic Church, 1998's very creepy ``Brimstone,'' which
dealt with heaven, hell and redemption -- had real edge.
But most series within the rather limited genre -- ``Touched by an Angel,''
``Highway to Heaven,'' ``7th Heaven'' -- have taken very traditional, very
conservative views of faith.
The new shows are a very different breed. Morally ambiguous, sometimes sardonic
and emotionally dark, they suggest that receiving a higher calling from a
higher power is not easy to live with and that there are far more questions
about the nature of faith and the afterlife than there are answers.
As new grim reaper Georgie Lass says glumly in an early episode of ``Dead Like
Me'': ``Everybody dies. That's just the way it is. I'm told I'm not supposed to
argue or question or even try to understand.''
The creators of this new spiritual TV have slightly different views of why so
many similarly themed series have emerged at the same time -- a time when
television is dominated by simply digested police procedurals, reality series
and family comedies.
Barbara Hall, the creator of ``Joan of Arcadia,'' says she ``could go into the
Jungian philosophy of the collective unconscious. Or I could go with: There's
something in the zeitgeist right now, that people are thinking about this
stuff.''
But, she adds, ``I do think Sept. 11 had something to do with it . . . and
caused people to start thinking about the religion and faith in their lives.
But for whatever reason, there is something in the air, that people are willing
to take a look at or have a discussion of spiritual issues.''
Marti Noxon, the executive producer of ``Still Life,'' also thinks ``a lot of
it is a response to 9/11. I think a lot of people feel a lot of loss and . . .
what's going on in the world and the country is really frightening. And the
notion that there's something beyond physical death is very, very compelling
always.''
Bryan Fuller, creator of ``Dead Like Me'' and co-creator of ``Wonderfalls,''
simply suggests that ``it's a product of our society to wonder if there's
something greater than ourselves.''
Almost to a person, those involved in these new shows thought what they were
writing might be just too ``out there'' to make it onto American television.
Halfway through writing the first episode of ``Joan of Arcadia,'' Hall says she
thought: ``What am I doing? Nobody is ever going to make this pilot.''
What may have laid the groundwork was the success of ``Six Feet Under,'' the
surreal and ironic drama set in a family-run funeral home. The series, which
deals weekly with mortality and the nature of death, is not only HBO's
most-watched drama after ``The Sopranos,'' but it also has received a raft of
Emmy nominations the past two years.
``I really think `Six Feet Under' opened a door for audiences to be slightly
more comfortable with the subject matter,'' says Fuller.
Just how far do the shows go in their examinations? It varies. ``Tru Calling''
is close to a traditional science fiction-fantasy series. ``Still Life'' keeps
its plot rooted in family drama elements. But others are taking some real risks
in terms of asking viewers to immerse themselves in rather difficult questions
of faith.
On ``Carnivale,'' for example, ``religion is a theme that comes through because
it was important to the time'' in which the show is set, says creator Daniel
Knauf. ``What we're really talking about is hearts and minds and people trying
to gather souls. You can't do that without some kind of religious subtext.''
Adds Ronald D. Moore, the series' executive producer: ``The roots of the show
are eternal. They are the struggle of light and dark and good versus evil. It
does examine questions of faith and it does examine the nature of man. It's not
afraid of exploring that terrain.''
Most of the shows decline to get into explicit discussions of the nature of God
or the specific beliefs of organized religions. In the case of ``Wonderfalls,''
Fuller says, ``everybody involved has a different idea of what that higher
power is. All the voices speak from one godhead or god source, but what that is
I don't think anybody knows.
``We didn't want to be too pretentious in defining that higher power as
anything . . . well, definable. I don't think anyone is qualified to do that.''
Even though ``Joan of Arcadia'' comes the closest to presenting the God of the
Old and New Testaments -- and God is a recurring character each week -- Hall
says ``there are a lot of unanswered questions'' in the show ``about God and
how he behaves and what he thinks. In trying to write about God, I obviously
don't know what God is thinking.
``The out I leave myself is that early on, God says he won't answer any direct
questions because, metaphorically speaking, it's pretty clear that God simply
will not explain to us what is going on. Part of God is that he -- or she -- is
a mystery. It's part of my `Joan of Arcadia' rules that the mystery can never
be solved.''
And although it is clear that the Girardis are fallen Catholics, Hall says the
God of her show ``can't choose one religion over another. . . . We will get
into issues of religion. But as God says to Joan in the pilot, `It's not about
religion. It's about fulfilling your nature.'
``That's really the point of view we're coming from: God's wish for Joan and
for everybody to fulfill their true natures.''
Whether the American television audience is ready for this heavy rush of
metaphysical musings remains to be seen. And those involved in the shows are
very aware that they are in the entertainment business, not delivering sermons
on Sunday morning.
``People tune into television to be interested and entertained and not to be
bored. I don't think people tune in to be preached to, so we have nothing to
preach,'' Hall says.
``But,'' she adds, ``these are things I think about all the time. I believe
these are things that other people think about all the time. . . . I'm not
trying to supply answers, but I do think these are interesting questions, and
to have a show that would just kick off the conversation would be great.''
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