TV Review: What would God watch? Perhaps he would pass over Songs of Praise because, when he turns on the TV on a Sunday evening, he wants to be able to forget about work. Would he be interested, for instance, in Noah's Ark, the latest programme in which Jeremy Bowen ransacks through the Bible's better allegories, searching for truth behind snazzy computer graphics and incongruous London actors.
Previously, Bowen has presented series on the lives of Mary and Jesus. In each he has done so while feigning to stroll through history, so that this week he could be found trying to persuade a camel to enter the ark, and later reporting from the deck as the flood hit. Someday, somewhere, an archaeologist is going to dig up a fossilised pair of chinos deep within the cracked Middle East earth, and if they haven't watched any of Bowen's programmes, they will be quite baffled.
Once again, then, he puts the Bible through de Mille. While his other series have included some genuinely awkward suggestions - such as whether Mary claimed she was a virgin to avoid admitting that she had been raped by a soldier - the reliance on historical drama means that conjecture and fact too often come together in an unsettling soup. Last Sunday, Noah's Ark took some time to discount the biblical version of the man (played here by Peter Polycarppou), but only before concocting a more prosaic but still wholly hypothetical scenario. It was also told in Fisher Price language, shorn of syllables. A god of God's intelligence would surely have tired of such patronising simplicity, perhaps turning over to see what was going on in Emmerdale.
Religion is a difficult one for public service broadcasters in increasingly secular societies, because they are generally keen to include most people, offend few and entertain everybody. RTÉ still perseveres with the anachronism that is its broadcast of the Angelus; its soft focus visual accompaniment unable to disguise its hard edge of fundamentalism. But it has also managed a greater subtlety with Would You Believe?, a series of documentaries that has mainly refused to allow its religious remit to either drag it down into acquiescent piety nor up into happy-clappy delusion.
This week's film featured the story of Josie O'Mahony, who has cared for her husband Donal since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 24 years ago. Faith was featured, but no more than it might have even if it was not explicit to the brief. It was an obvious question anyhow, given how long her husband has been a vague version of his previous self. She is as resilient in her trust in God, it turns out, as she is in her love for her husband. The title of the film, in fact, was simply Love. It was one of those quiet stories that the series has a habit of turning up. According to Josie you can't know how you'll cope until you're placed in the situation. Hers was a dedication and courage that you admired, while hoping that you'd never have to discover the answer about yourself.
The desperately moving The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off first needed to overcome its title. Utterly crass, it epitomised Channel 4's recent obsession with sensationalism, so much so that the week had already featured a film called The Man Who Ate His Archbishop's Liver?. Thursday night's programme was a considerate, measured documentary, unworthy of such tawdry packaging. It began with the corpse of its narrator. "That's me in the box." Jonny Kennedy had lived his 36 years with a rare genetic disorder in which the skin blisters at the touch, attempts to re-grow but becomes cancerous. His body was small, hunched and covered in sores. His feet and arms were stumps. He had spent his life in unimaginable pain and was finally being consumed by cancer, so was recording his last months. A caption regularly reminded us: "Four Months to Go, One Month to Go, Three Days to Go". It was in keeping with Jonny's rigorous planning of his funeral.
He had himself measured for the coffin. "Look at that. Perfect fit." He had a housewarming party that doubled as a last goodbye.
A man of deep wit, he was the founder of a charity for the disease, DEBRA, to which the model Nell McAndrew agreed to lend a hand. They met at a photo-shoot.
She kept breaking down as she spoke to him, hugging him, her physical perfection thrilling his wretched body. "Every time she leaned over, I could see right down her top." When she left, he motioned the microphone forward.
"The guy's a pro," he whispered of himself. He gave a little Austin Powers-like rub of his nipple for added emphasis.
It was a lesson in endurance and courage. The scenes of Jonny having his bandages dressed, the old ones sticking to his rotting skin as they were lifted, his screams through gritted teeth, will not easily dissipate from the mind. Nor should they. This was a film that was rare in its approach to death; not only in its recording of his final hours but in Jonny's reminder that it is sometimes accompanied by relief. It is hard to believe that there will be a story of such power for some time. By the way, Jonny was a Spiritualist. It is a Christian religion that embraces clairvoyance and wandering spirits and seemed quite perfect for someone so betrayed by their body.
It was a week in which it was easier to look away. Police Protecting Children is a three-part documentary following British investigators chasing up subscribers to paedophilia websites. The programme's most curious aspect was how it featured the arrest of The Who's guitarist Pete Townshend, after he accessed websites for, he claimed, research purposes. Having fled the pack of photographers outside, the strip-lighted station corridor illuminated his embarrassment. During questioning, he made a brief joke, but shame cut short his laugh. He was asked if he had any learning difficulties, how was his reading level. They removed any items that he might use to harm himself, the clatter of keys and coins on the station counter being the humdrum sounds at the white core of a scandal.
As he left the station, the officers each shook his hand. It was hard to believe that they won't have watched the footage on Tuesday night and cringed at their weakness in the glare of celebrity, because they were otherwise impassive. Police Protecting Children focuses on procedure, punctuating the humdrum with the horrific. One moment officers are discussing the football ("You don't get many 4-3s in the Premiership these days"). The next, the screen is filled with blurred or blacked-out photographs of children being raped; the hidden image stoking parts of the imagination that you would rather not see disturbed. We have no sense yet of how this affects the officers; and it is not interested in the why of paedophilia, only the how. There has been no mention of God.
There are plenty of US procedural dramas on the go at the moment offering the comforts of fiction. They act as a respite from the dramas that, while often quite excellent, demand weekly commitment and attention. Both CSI or Law and Order: SVU are popular. These, you might have noticed, are heady days for acronym-based shows.
Without A Trace is a straightforward whodunnit, this time specialising in the FBI's missing persons department. It doesn't hang about. Each week somebody goes missing. They look for them. They find them in the nick of time. It is led by agent Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia), a character unmoved by the distractions offered by emotion.
This week, the daughter of the assistant district attorney went missing. It was obvious that the kidnapper was either the father's jilted mistress, the nanny or the angry brother of a criminal jailed by the DA. It was, of course, none of them. One of those suspects got fed upbeing called in to the station. "You people are disgusting," she told Jack Malone. No they're not. For a start, you don't get bad Jacks in fiction. Secondly, this is not The Shield, in which the cops and robbers sit at a table and you can't tell who is who. Making time to pick up brown envelopes stuffed with cash would only slow things down. Again: someone goes missing, they search for them, they find them in the nick of time. Sometimes, you're very happy with that.
