The Second Coming | David Porter

Come again? I don't think so...

THE SECOND COMING
Written by Russell T. Davies
Directed by Adrian Shergold
Transmitted ITV 9/10 February 2003
Video and DVD release forthcoming

The news that atheist Russell T. Davies (whose films include such shock productions as the explicit gay drama Queer as Folk) had written a major ITV drama about the Second Coming was a sure-fire news-grabber.

As research he read the New Testament through, and it shows: for example, the dual nature of Christ as man and God obviously fascinates him and is a constant motif in the drama. Steven Baxter - an ordinary bloke working in a Manchester video shop - gradually becomes aware that he is the Son of God: 'It downloads a bit at a time'. He announces himself via the Internet and addresses a rally at Maine Road Stadium where he turns night into day, his first miracle. His second makes him globally famous: he and his friends walk unscathed out of a pub in which a devil has just exploded a large bomb.

The devils are ordinary humans possessed by demons (you can tell who they are because their eyes go all metallic). Recognising who Baxter is, they prepare for war. Baxter challenges humanity to prepare a 'Third Testament' (he does not know what a 'Third Testament' is; the plan is only being revealed to him piecemeal). Failure to produce the Testament will initiate Armageddon and Judgement Day: if it is produced, 'Everything starts again. There's no official church any more - just me.'

Biblical resonances

He is taken into police protection, but two of the police are devils. His father (who, police surgeons discover, has been sterile from birth and cannot have fathered Steven) is won over by the dark forces and tries to shoot him: the police chief, also on the dark side, attempts to imprison him. In two of the drama's most poignant biblical resonances, he forgives the police chief, and, seeing his father being led away after the shooting, kisses him.

The resolution of the story comes when Judith (with whom Steven makes love off-screen) realises that the Third Testament is also Judgement Day: judgement upon Steven, upon God, upon Christianity. Steven, who has survived murder attempts but is still able to die, must indeed now die: then, she pleads with him, God will be dead and with him the devils, and humanity, reliant now on its own resources, will be able to move into a new period of happiness. She prepares him a meal laced with rat poison: in a poignant echo of the Last Supper, he accepts her revelation of his God-given duty, eats and dies in agony.

Confusion

Such dramas often jolt us into seeing familiar truths through new, intelligent eyes. Christopher Eccleston's nervy, finely-etched Steven Baxter, with his flat Mancunian vowels, made me realise afresh that Jesus probably looked and sounded much like that to the people of his day. What would I have gone into the wilderness to see? Again, the portrayal of the devils had some good insights into how evil corrupts those who serve it. And though the portrayal of the dual nature of Christ was theologically a hopeless mish-mash, it made me think hard about the subject, which I hadn't done for quite a while. Baxter's cry of 'I'm like you! I've been you!' was particularly moving.

But all that was poor compensation for the nasty taste the drama left in my mouth.

There was the preposterous final leap into optimistic humanism, for example, implying that God willed his own death because humanity needed to grow up and manage without him. The Evangelical Alliance has perceptively compared this 'simplistic vision' to that of John Lennon's 'Imagine'.

There is the confusion caused by a drama like this and the confusions it contains. The whole woolly notion of a Third Testament had no basis in Christian faith. And the author's wrestling with the humanity of Christ led to such lines as his plea for a night off - 'to get p*ssed, see Judy ù just one night, before it all starts'. No Gethsamane agonies for this messiah, then. And no hint at all of the biblical picture - a Christ who comes in glory, bringing judgement and deliverance, as Lord of lords and King of kings - and is received with joy by the church (who in Davies' drama spend much of the time preparing media announcements). This Jesus is as bemused and powerless as Rice-Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar.

Lastly, why does the choice so often have to be between literate, thoughtful agnosticism, and poorly-written, banal biblical orthodoxy? What Christian fiction there has been about the Second Coming has often been appallingly trite. There's much to do here. Let's be thankful for the likes of Norman Stone, whose TV Easter film series Tales from the Madhouse succeeded in interrogating the essence of the gospel in profound and dramatically cutting-edge ways, while building on a solid foundation of biblical truth.

Oh, and by the way - The Second Coming was originally commissioned by Channel 4. They got cold feet. What are the chances of that happening, eh?