c. 1999 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ May is a television ratings”sweeps”month and the networks yet again have found religion in an effort to boost their audiences. NBC started it off with its popular May 2-3 broadcast of the biblical disaster epic”Noah’s Ark,”while CBS airs its”Joan of Arc”miniseries May 16 and 18th. ABC will do”Cleopatra,”May 22-23.

The timing of”Joan of Arc”is jokingly providential to the Rev. Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. CBS executives note their miniseries’ first night is May 16 _ the same day in 1920 that Pope Benedict XV made Joan a saint.”And when she was canonized,”Coiro quipped,”the pope had this premonition that one day, May would be `sweeps,’ month.” Clergy like Coiro and religious scholars take in stride that TV’s interest is more about the spirit of religious figures and events than actual facts.”We all live by our sacred stories,”said Steven Fine, associate professor of rabbinical literature and history at Baltimore Hebrew University.”And the stories that we tell ourselves have to be good ones.” CBS senior vice-president Sunta Izzicupo called it”serendipity”that all three networks have historical or religious-themed programming this May.”Historical stories hold up,”she said.”A historical piece has huge scope, spectacle, action, foreign location and an emotional story line … it has `event’ quality.” NBC’s”Noah’s Ark”dominated both nights it was shown. Nielsen ratings show that over the two nights more than 20 million American households watched all or part of it.”Noah’s Ark”very loosely adapted the Old Testament flood story found in Genesis, for example placing Noah amid the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, an event that happened generations later and involving Abraham and his nephew Lot rather than Noah.

Robert Halmi, the show’s executive producer, said he took Abraham out of the story because”Abraham would have brought in religion”and he liked Noah’s story because it was”the first disaster story ever.” An NBC spokeswoman said the network received about 100 phone calls complaining about”Noah’s Ark”but said that should be balanced by the more than 15,000 viewers who made initial orders for video copies of the show.

Bedrock family values like sexual abstinence before marriage are what appeals to Halmi, who also produced ABC’s”Cleopatra.”Halmi made both shows through miniseries staple Hallmark Entertainment, with”Noah’s Ark”costing $30 million and”Cleopatra”costing $28 million.

An Emmy-award winning, Hungarian-born TV entrepreneur, Halmi has produced such NBC miniseries hits as”Gulliver’s Travels,”The Odyssey,”and”Merlin.”A father of four and grandfather of eight, he believes TV must provide shows that families can watch as one.”The family unit is falling apart,”he said.”Right now these epics bring families together.” At the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, biblical literature and Semitic languages professor Ziony Zevit said television’s taking license with religious history is similar to Renaissance painters who painted the Apostles in Renaissance garb.”The only harm that comes from all this is a great deal of misinformation,”Zevit said. By next year’s May sweeps people probably will have forgotten the inaccuracies of”Noah’s Ark,”or”Joan of Arc,”he said.”What they’re forgetting is historically inaccurate in the first place.” Halmi said he took liberties and dramatic license with”Noah’s Ark”because the story of the flood is”based on belief, on historical fiction. Nobody knows who wrote it and nobody knows how these stories came to be.” He said he was more scrupulous with”Cleopatra”because”Cleopatra is based on written fact. This was the first woman in history that used brains, sexuality and power to become one of the big players in world history and competed on an even level with Caesar and Marc Anthony.” When asked if Cleopatra has any modern counterparts, Halmi laughed and said ABC”put the first promotion for”Cleopatra”on during the Monica Lewinsky interview.” Terry Lindvall, chair of the visual communications department at Regent University _ the school founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson _ said”Noah’s Ark”was”too tame”but because Noah’s sons and their girlfriends remained chaste, the miniseries”celebrated virginity.””Joan of Arc”was produced by Alliance Atlantis which spent about $25 million on the show, according to industry sources. This week it announced that Welsh teen soprano Charlotte Church has signed to sing the theme song.

At CBS, Sunta Izzicupo describes”Joan of Arc”as”`Braveheart’ with a woman.”With its allusions to God’s voice, the miniseries also fits into the network’s demographics of fans for the series”Touched by an Angel,”the Sunday night show that will be the lead-in to the first night’s episode.”Most people in America have a religious or spiritual aspect to them and television has been reluctant to explore that,”Izzicupo said.”I think we’re feeling freer to do that.” With its emphasis on a Catholic teen martyr, Izzicupo said the five-hundred-year-old story is”perfect for the millennium. The message is still important: You have to rise above your circumstances, you have to have faith, and you need to be willing to inspire others. This story has built-in recognizability. An unknown story I would not do. When you say Joan of Arc, it has recognizability.””There may be a sense of intellectual hunger for history,”said Lindvall.”And even if it is superficial, entertainment history, the kind of history that Disney has created that’s artificial and superficial, it gives people a sense that they knew what the story was without a sense of facticity.””Every generation lives through the Bible and reads its own experiences through it,”said Hebrew University’s Fine.”Once you get to college we’ll tell you what’s right and what isn’t.”

DEA END FINNIGAN