Posted on 03/31/2013 8:08:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Television watchers across the country are glomming on to an unlikely megahit: the History Channel’s 10-hour retelling of stories from the Bible. To the disbelief of Hollywood executives, viewers are shunning a lineup that includes “Revenge” and “The Mentalist” to watch another telling of the greatest story ever told.
During its first three weeks, the miniseries produced by reality-show producer Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey, the star of “Touched By an Angel,” has drawn upward of 10 million viewers for each episode. That’s more, our critic Daniel Wattenberg reports, than anything aired by ABC or NBC during the same period. Who needs “Scandal” or “Deception” when the original, complete with serpent, is available?
This is not a line-by-line, chapter-and-verse telling of the stories from the Bible. Events are compressed, and more than one critical eyebrow has been raised over the ninja-style fighting engaged in by angels and the Israelites in their escape from bondage.
SNIP SNIP
Hollywood itself would do well to closely examine the overall success of “The Bible,” which concludes its initial television run on Sunday. Home-video release will follow by Tuesday, and the DVD and Blu-ray discs are expected to be hot sellers, too.
Sordid and trashy has become the norm for much of television entertainment, and the Bible’s blockbuster success should inspire entertainment executives to think again about taking stories from the Bible. A lot of people thought the runaway success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” a decade ago would inspire Hollywood, too. The market for family-oriented, values-affirming entertainment is huge and all but untapped. The success of “The Bible” ought to persuade Hollywood, where the pursuit of money is all, that such stories are where the money is.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Can you imagine a biblical version of "Modern Family'?
The reason Hollywood doesn’t get it is because they don’t want it. They didn’t understand “The Passion of the Christ” either. Great shows like “The Waltons” puzzled Hollywood too. Ralph Waite took the job of John Walton because he’d been told by his agent that “It would never sell”. They studio executives even put it in a time slot they expected it to die in. It didn’t. I don’t believe people really want crap amoral ugly vulgarity and obscenity in the their media. The average American wants to feel good when they watch tv and not be constantly assaulted. The Walking Dead has a lot of killing but the reason it has such a wide appeal is I think people actually yearn for the end of this type of shallow empty world even many who are not religious.
Screw Hollywood, I would cancel all my channels but 1 or 2 if I could. I only have cable for the internet.
Oh, and I love that Satan looked like Obama.... this series is indeed authentic.
In the past, neither the general Hollywood types nor the Christian community was so willing to rip into a Biblical story for what it saw were its flaws.
The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and King of Kings were grand Biblical epics in the 1950s and 1960s, and people don’t constantly gripe at them for their lack of line by line recitation of the scriptures.
What Mark Burnett and Roma Downey did was present the basic stories of the scriptures to millions of people who have probably never heard those stories in any form. If even a small portion of those pick up a Bible to read the stories for themselves, then Burnett and Downey have led more people to read the Bible than most evangelists in history. The Holy Spirit can grow the seeds that they scattered that landed on fertile ground. How many might come to know Christ? And so many bicker and gripe about it.
Which people would you bar from eternal life because it wasn’t presented the way you would like?
Amen.
I saw Olympus has Fallen today with my son. My comment at the end? It’s good see a movie where America isn’t the bad guy.
Yep that is another area Hollywood typical screws up. They have difficulty just making a solid America is the hero movie but when they do the ratings are off the chart.
This is in my Netflix queue and I can’t wait.
I agree. It may not have been “strictly by the Book”.
But it got people watching and talking. A remarkable event.
The thing that amused me most was the “V” rating. Given the popular shows on tv are horribly violent (Criminal Minds, etc) it is pretty amazing.
The last episode was quite good. That the show got great ratings is a hopeful sign.
Every body with cable should call their cable company and tell them you want to be able to pick and choose what channels you want. Vulgar junk makes money by being packaged——Let them know you will drop cable if they don’t give you an option, because you are sick of the puerile programming and you don’t want it streamed into your house. (I told my company that when I cancelled cable.) You can stream anything worth seeing on your computer too.
If people quit supporting the perverted producers and their shows-—they won’t make them. I quit cable 8 years ago and it is the BEST thing I have ever done in my life and my library is immense : ) . I get DVD’s at the library-—they have some great ones on Tesla, Westinghouse and family fare, too, and profound movies like “Amazing Grace” (Wilberforce).
They put all the popular shows on DVD, anyways-—which you can buy soon after the season. I just bought the Waltons. What innocence and goodness being promoted. Children learn to be kind. It is what all kids were exposed to before the 70’s. No cussing, no vulgarity. It is refreshing and affirms behavior which leads to long lasting relationships (and happiness).
We watched all episodes and overall we thought it was pretty good.
bookmark
I don’t have cable, can’t justify paying to watch comercials. So today I pulled out my old DVD of “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and was, as usual, truely impressed with the visuals and no CGI.
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