So 'God' decides to commit suicide and dies? Hmmm...
Its not often I watch drama on the telly. The odd comedy, a little nannied news yes, but drama no. I mostly to stick to films for that. (A notable exception being '24' but I watched that on DVD anyway). Its just I find that TV drama tends to be as thought provoking as the proverbial drying paint.
So it was by chance tonight that I watched the second and concluding part of a drama called 'The Second Coming'. I missed the first part, but the gist was that some miracle or other had occurred (its set in Manchester, so perhaps it didn't rain for a whole day...) and the guy at the centre of it declared himself to be the 'son of God' (nee 'Stephen Baxter' in an unintended comedy sci-fi author crossover) and that he was going to announce a '3rd testament' the following day.
Here's a synopsis of part 2:
- This is serious. There's devils possessing people and everything. Baxter can do godly stuff at will, including dodging bullets with *both* hands behind his back (beat that Keanu!)
- Baxter has 3 disciples. One (his 'dad') gets possessed and tries to kill Baxter, but actually kills disciple number 2. Disciple 3 is an old childhood nearly-sweetheart and they end up having sex. One wonders if the earth moved...
- Baxter is taped saying that if the '3rd testament' isn't announced then Judgement Day is going to happen instead (I thought that happened back in 1997 with Arnie and the other robot dude, but I must be wrong). This is broadcast and the whole world goes a bit crazy (those miracles in Part 1 must have been pretty convincing)
- Here's the crux (sorry, no pun intended) : Disciple 3 figures out that the third testament (which Baxter can't actually figure out) is that there *is* to be a Judgement Day, and the judgement is actually to be on 'God'. The judgment is that for humanity to develop, the best thing would be for God, Religion and all other powers to cease to exist. So she (disciple 3) invites Baxter to her house, tells him her theory and invites him to kill himself by eating poisoned spaghetti. Baxter types 'iddqd'[1], goes into god-mode and realises she's right. So, he kills himself and that's it - no more God, Devil, Heaven or Hell, just human beings trying to make the most of it.
The most interesting thing about this to me is that it was broadcast on ITV in a prime-time slot. Surely this is the land of 'Heartbeat' (an awful 'set in the 60s' police/romatic drama), 'Soldier Soldier' (a modern day would-be-army/romantic drama) and 'Who Wants to be a millionaire?' (because 'money *is* the most important thing in life!') ? All of these things are alike in that they offend very few (well, apart from me obviously but that's just down to their general lameness and I am happy turning off.)
But the plot line I've described above? Apart from its complete obsurdity[2], surely its going to offend quite a few people? The Christians aren't going to be happy because it says that humanity is better off without the Christian god and even 'God' himself realises that, the Muslims aren't going to be happy because they already have a post-Christ testament, and pretty much every other believer of one theistic persuasion or another isn't going to be happy either because their god(s) didn't even get a look-in. Oh yeah, and the atheists probably didn't like it much because it implied there *was* a god to start off with.
So we're not exactly in Heartbeat territory here.
I guess the only people who this wouldn't offend (apart from those in the above groups who can just laugh at it, and fair play to such people) are those who feel they would like to believe in something outside of humanity but frankly think that mankind rocks and are therefore quite happy with not believing; and people like me who don't have a clue what 'its really all about' anyway so find it hard to be offended by anything on the subject.
The only conclusion I can draw is that ITV thinks that these 'non-offended' groups are in fact the vast majority of the population of the UK which is a bit of a turnaround considering I thought we still claimed to be a Christian (or at least 'believing') country. You know, 'Defender of (the) faith', hymns in school, etc?
Hmm, I think I better go back to *not* watching TV dramas. They're far too thought provoking after all...
[1] OK, that bit belonged in the tech blog. I'm sorry.
[2] You know, pretending to follow-along from previous Christian belief, but completely contradicting it (I could get controversial myself here, but I won't ;) ), and also the philosophically difficult idea of the source of only-and-ultimate power in the universe ceasing to exist, and the universe itself carrying on regardless.
[3] (Well there wasn't a [3], but I can't count) There's probably a load of spelling mistakes in this. I'm a software developer, I can't help it...
11:59:35 PM 
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