Church Woes Are Invading TV Pilots
Tue May 7, 9:01 AM ET
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY The New York Times
“The Calling,” a prospective ABC television drama, has a pious plot about a seminarian engaged in a personal search for God. But the script has a twist that is likely to be troubling to Roman Catholic bishops: the church is extraneous and even a hurdle in the spiritual quest.
The pilot is one of several being considered for the fall season that deal with the Catholic Church and that seem to mirror the public mood, a disenchantment with the church hierarchy.
The creators of “The Calling,” which was planned before the current child-abuse scandals broke, describe it as “a spiritual ‘X Files,’ ” and say they took their hero out of the priesthood (he began as a Vatican investigator) to avoid upsetting Catholic groups. But the script portrays the higher clergy as jaded and ultimately irrelevant. The hero refuses to be ordained when he discovers that his superiors at the archdiocese do not really believe in miracles. He investigates them on his own.
“The show deals with someone who is looking to renew his faith,” Roger Birnbaum, the executive producer, explained. “But that does not mean he has to get it from a church.”
The networks will select their new shows over the next two weeks. If ABC picks up “The Calling,” its Catholic setting will stand out amid a crowd of shows about Washington and the mob that seek to imitate “The West Wing” and “The Sopranos.” But it will not necessarily stand alone.
Sylvester Stallone has developed a pilot called “Father Lefty” for CBS. It is about a handsome, unconventional Miami priest, played by Danny Nucci (“The Rock,” 1996), who ministers to street kids. He comes to his vocation a bit oddly. A marine in the Persian Gulf war, he makes a promise to God to serve him if, by a miracle, the life of his Muslim girlfriend is saved.
“It is kind of `Northern Exposure’ in a rectory,” said Cynthia Cidre, the creator and an executive producer of the pilot. “But he’s not going to walk around in robes praying with folded hands. He’s a Miami guy in shorts.”
Ms. Cidre said that Mr. Stallone based the character on a real priest, and that CBS approved the pilot before the scandal about priests erupted. But a little like “The Agency” and other law-enforcement shows that had to factor Sept. 11 into their plots, “Father Lefty” is likely to address pedophilia if the show gets a green light.
“We can’t just ignore it,” Ms. Cidre said.
Neither can other networks, apparently. FX is exploring ways to make a movie about pedophilia and sexual abuse in the church. NBC could also end up weaving Catholicism into its comedy lineup. The pilot for an NBC television-newsroom farce includes a nun who lands a job as a weather forecaster because she is the cousin of the station manager.
David Letterman has already lined his monologue with jokes about the scandal. It is also a natural fit for prime-time crime shows. The season finale of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” on May 17 will feature a murder linked to the diocese’s cover-up of a top ranking priest’s pedophilia. That episode was originally scheduled for September, but current events pushed it ahead to the height of the May sweeps.
“We say our shows are ripped from the headlines, so should we ignore this?” asked Dick Wolf, the creator of the “Law and Order” shows. Mr. Wolf, who was an altar boy for Cardinal Francis Spellman at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1950’s, said he did not expect angry phone calls from Catholic antidefamation organizations. “What can we say that would be any worse than what has been in the newspapers for the last two months?”
Such depictions are, to say the least, a marked departure from the solemn deference of the 1950’s when Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen had his own show, dispensing his thoughts and homilies about living a Godly life.
The pilots are also a shift away from even the most recent drama set in a parish, “Nothing Sacred,” a 1996 series on ABC about a conflicted urban priest. The Catholic League, an antidefamation group, persuaded sponsors to leave the show, and ABC canceled it after 11 episodes, never showing the most contested ones, which dealt compassionately with priests with AIDS and angrily with pedophile priests and their protectors in the church.
In retrospect “Nothing Sacred,” which tried to give its main characters the gritty virtue that “E.R.” gave to emergency-room doctors, seems like a Notre Dame recruitment film. In the light of the current scandals, even “The Thornbirds,” the 1983 mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain as a priest who breaks his vow of celibacy, seems quaint. His forbidden love is for an adult woman.
Sinful priests are hardly new to popular culture. They have been a staple of literature from Chaucer to Graham Greene. Since 1994, when the CBS inspirational drama “Touched by an Angel)” became a surprise hit, other shows have woven spirituality into story lines, mostly in a fuzzy, nondenominational way.
The nature of the priesthood, however, with its special vows and rules, offers more dramatic possibilities than a Presbyterian minister or a rabbi. Countless television plots have revolved around a priest who learns the identity of a murderer in the confessional but cannot turn the culprit in.
The vow of chastity also carries inherent human drama.
Daytime soap operas, which wallow in lust and betrayal, have found the priestly collar especially hard to resist. Soap opera priests are usually handsome, however, and struggling to resist women. On “The Guiding Light,” Father Ray is falsely accused of sexual harassment by his brother’s wicked fiancée. (There is a happy ending: she is murdered on the wedding night.)
Father Ray does not give into temptation, but the handsome actor who plays him was chosen to tempt female viewers. “He’s a hunk, and we try to get him out of his shirt and collar as much as we can,” Lucky Gold, a “Guiding Light” writer, explained. “He does a lot of boxing and running.”
Prime time television has more mutable conventions. The affectionate flippancy that veined “The Flying Nun” turned sardonic in later decades. On “M*A*S*H” the archetype of the priest was Father Mulcahy, a kindly, but ineffectual chaplain. On “The Sopranos,” Father Phil is a glutton who sponges off Tony Soprano’s devout wife, Carmela. The show’s creator and producer, David Chase, said he expected Tony Soprano to taunt Carmela with the pedophilia scandal in new episodes. “I don’t think Tony Soprano could resist.”
Some ministers and priests on prime time television are ethical role models. In the first season of “The West Wing,” President Jed Bartlet, a practicing Catholic, sought the wisdom of a priest, played by Karl Malden, when faced with a difficult death-penalty case. But they are minor characters.
“The networks’ discomfort with shows about the Catholic Church is tied to their reluctance to leave out any large part of the audience,” said Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing.” “I think it would take some courage to put on a show that deals specifically with a particular religion.”
The writers of “The Calling” chose to take their hero out of the church to keep their thriller interesting to a wide audience. The Catholic Church’s acknowledgment of covering up child abuse cases and its apology could make it easier for networks to bring up the subject in a dramatic series. “Whenever something controversial comes up in the news, it takes the taboo off of network television,” said Neal Baer, a writer and executive producer of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” But William Donahue of the Catholic League warned of a backlash against the networks from Catholic viewers who do not trust Hollywood to portray their troubles responsibly.
Ratings calculations will ultimately make the decision. “Our show is supposed to be a thriller,” Richard Hatem, the writer and executive producer of “The Calling,” said of his pilot’s chances of being picked up by CBS. “So I guess it depends on whether test audiences get the heebie-jeebies because its scary or because they are afraid someone is going to touch a kid.”
