The Book of Daniel
Hey, TV watchers in Terre Haute and Little Rock, where
The Book of Daniel has been banned by the NBC affiliates in deference to your religious wingnuts. Don’t worry. You’re not missing anything.
I couldn’t get past the first hour of the new show’s premiere tonight, despite the fact that (a) I really wanted to like it, and (2) it has some respected actors in the cast. What it doesn’t have are engaging characters, or even halfway decent writing, or any kind of rhythm or flow or compelling reason to watch television on a Friday night. If there was an honest emotion in the entire episode, I missed it. And I don’t usually miss things like that.
The Jesus angle? It’s not only the best part of the show (which isn’t saying much), but it should be in no way offensive to believers. Jesus appears to the preacher and they chat, old frat buddy style, about the spiritual and personal crises that afflict the preacher’s overly large and overly dysfunctional extended family.
Wasted: Aidan Quinn, who usually chooses his roles much more carefully than this; Susanna Thompson, who was so great in
Once and Again; Garret Dillahunt, who played the cold-blooded company man in
Deadwood; Ellen Burstyn, who is slightly less animated than a stained-glass window; and everybody else with talent that disappears in a preachy whirl of fumbling, overwritten dialogue.
One scene between Quinn and Dillahunt’s Jesus has a little life to it. The rest? It gives new meaning to the term “holy crap.”
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