New York, USA - The pilot script for NBC's Revelations was written well before the release of last year's The Passion of the Christ, but the huge success of that film - and some of its controversy - looms over the six-episode thriller.
evelations, which premieres Wednesday (9 p.m. ET/PT), revolves around a nun (Natascha McElhone) and a skeptical Harvard scientist (Bill Pullman) who are confronted with hints of the Apocalypse and taunted by a jailed Satanist (Michael Massee).
"The news we take our morning coffee with is a sign anything can happen," creator David Seltzer says. He says the series imagines that famine, oil spills and "the turbulence of the oceans" - the recent tsunamis - can hint at the End of Days.
"People watching signs and conversant with the Bible definitely see it," he says.
The expressly Christian motif is rare in network drama. Passion "lets us say 'Jesus Christ' " on TV, which used to be a no-no, executive producer Gavin Polone says. And the film's non-studio production proved Hollywood was "wrong where the audience is when it comes to faith-based entertainment."
"It's a huge idea," Pullman says, that puts the network, which usually is averse to controversy, in the position of embracing it to win notice for the series. "NBC is like, 'Aahhh! We don't want to offend anybody; no, we want to offend people.' "
Revelations already is drawing protests from religious scholars who object to its interpretation of the Bible, though many have yet to see the series. "It's a very distinct line of interpretation and a very popular one, but it's much more problematic," says Craig Hill, an author and expert at debunking myths about the Book of Revelation in the popular Left Behind series of novels. "The whole notion that the apocalypse is to be prevented would be a very foreign idea (even) to followers of Left Behind. You really do have to twist the Bible to end up with this result."
Barbara Nicolosi, who heads Act One, a non-profit group that trains religious writers and executives for careers in Hollywood, says the pilot script appears "well-crafted," but "it's very insulting to people of faith to see our scriptures and doctrines mixed up with weird, occultic imagery and scenarios. I think that the red-state, religious, Passion of the Christ-loving audience whom NBC is trying to attract with this kind of programming will actually be repelled."
NBC stresses the series is not meant to teach scripture. "This is a fictional thriller," entertainment chief Kevin Reilly says. "We're not rewriting biblical philosophy."
It's no spoiler to say the world is not destroyed at the end, if only because NBC is mulling another chapter of the series if ratings are strong. Analyst Steve Sternberg of Magna Global USA says he believes the show could draw a big audience, less than a week after Pope John Paul II's funeral. "People are thinking about religious topics," he says.