----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003
4:31 PM
Subject: [Sndbox] Anyone Plan On
Watching?
I want to see this
one....anyone else plan on watching?
Speaking of the WB, "Joan of Arcadia," which debuts
Sept. 26 and is about a
contemporary teenaged Saint Joan, is CBS's
first serious effort to try to
WB-ize itself. Middle-aged dramas like
"Brotherhood" and crime dramas like
"The Handler" are more in keeping
with CBS's traditionally older
demographic, although "Joan"'s religious
fantasy theme does echo that old
Eye network hit "Touched By An Angel."
CBS's Maid of Orleans is 16-year-old Joan Girardi (Amber
Tamblyn), daughter
of a police chief (Joe Mantegna) and housewife (Mary
Steenburgen) who are
both lapsed Catholics. Creator-excutive producer
Barbara Hall (previous
credits: "Judging Amy," "Moonlighting,"
"Northern Exposure") is a lapsed
Methodist who became convinced of the
existence of God through reading books
about physics.
"It's
so clear when you look at physics how little we understand," Hall
said
at the CBS news conference. "We are really the fish who don't know
that
they're in water." Hall is a convert to Catholicism. But one of
the rules
for "Joan of Arcadia" writers, she added, is that God doesn't
favor any
particular religion.
"I can safely say that we're
going with monotheism," Hall noted with a
laugh. "It's sort of worked
for a while now."
Other rules of the show are: God can't
directly intervene in human affairs,
he can only work through humans;
God won't answer any direct questions; God
doesn't punish directly;
Joan always has the right to refuse God's requests;
God may be benign,
but the universe is not.
God does not speak to "Joan of
Arcadia" as a disembodied voice or burning
bush but appears in various
human forms -- most commonly, in the pilot, as a
cute guy not much
older than Joan herself.
Of all the theological questions
posed through the ages, this may be a
first: What if God were a hottie?
(Or ... a nice black cafeteria lady who
gives you extra tartar sauce
for your fish?)
The show could be cloying. But Hall's an
intelligent writer, and she has a
sharp, edgy actress in young Amber
Tamblyn (daughter of actor/dancer Russ
Tamblyn of "West Side Story").
I asked Hall if God would ever appear to Joan as unpleasant or
frightening.
"He can be odd-looking, but he's never going to
be malevolent," she
responded. "There will be scary elements in the
show, because my thinking is
that God is only interesting in a scary
world."
The real Joan of Arc, of course, led great armies into
bloody battles and
ended up burnt at the stake, which would be kind of
a TV downer. But also, I
guess, a must-see series finale when sweeps
time comes around! So I wouldn't
count anything out at this point.
Copyright 2003 by United Press
International.
Greg Hopper
"Why is it that our children
can't read a Bible in school, but they can in
prison?"
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