First, that article was way too good to be in Vulture. What happened? Second, have I mentioned that Jeff Zucker is an asshole?
Third, while I did not adore Kings as Kevin does, I did like it, and mourned it’s premature loss, especially as I was teaching an Honors class at the time that covered in Part the Hebrew Bible’s story of David. Wow, was that really 14 years ago? It is interesting to read that the theory was that it would draw a universal audience, both conservative religionists who take the source material literally and secular liberals who just like the drama. That was never likely. David is the most human of all the characters in the Hebrew Bible, and even if you stick literally to the authorized text you will alienate a lot of fundamentalists with details of his story. The more seriously you take the character, even when going beyond the text and geo and temporal locations of the story, the more you alienate traditionalists. But also, secularists will have trouble appreciating the complexity of his character if they rule out a priori that he was a man after Gods own heart. Kings was a story aimed at a relatively small intersection of liberal theists, large enough to support a show on prestige cable or contemporary streamers, but not broadcast television in the oughts. On Tue, 28 Feb 2023 at 11:32 AM Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > I adored this series. It was perfect in every way, except that it was on > NBC at a time when NBC could not figure out what to do with it. It was > promoted as “What if America had a king?” but that wasn’t what the series > was. > > On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 9:02 AM Mark Jeffries <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> In 2009, NBC tried to bring Prestige TV to OTA network television, in >> "KIngs," a big, sprawling, complicated, expensive, challenging drama with >> BIblical themes set in modern times. It was a longshot, but it may've made >> it--if not for Jeff Zucker. This is its oral history: >> >> >> https://www.vulture.com/article/kings-nbc-2009-oral-history.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One%20Great%20Story%20-%20February%2027%2C%202023&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20One%20Great%20Story >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/8f0a5052-d768-4c8f-9583-7d5b40bbde41n%40googlegroups.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/8f0a5052-d768-4c8f-9583-7d5b40bbde41n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > Kevin M. (RPCV) > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4CZU-w48UKAFg7owwstxv9%3DyfCLm40eJdcATBa0vBqkXw%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4CZU-w48UKAFg7owwstxv9%3DyfCLm40eJdcATBa0vBqkXw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJp7J4g_HBCQKonYEKmm6qhHAzq0hqK%3D73KZ3Qse4wmNg%40mail.gmail.com.
