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Rating:  - A New Hope
For all the theological babble the premise behind this TV drama is simple. What if God was one of us? Well his son anyway.
I saw this on TV about a year ago, and the fact that I am writing about it now means that for some reason it has stayed with me.
Watch it if you can and make you own mind up.
Rating: - Thought provoking drama
When TV drama is this intelligent, I suppose it's only to be expected that many people will miss the point or misinterpret it. The movie is not an ironic joke or an atheist manifesto. It's made quite clear that Steve Baxter is the messiah, the literal son of god made mortal in human flesh, with all the imperfections and limitations that implies. Yes, he's angry and offends people--just like the last messiah was angry and offended people.
Whether you agree with the final choice made by the protagonists or not, is not the point. As we see in the epilogue, even five years later they aren't sure whether they made the right choice themselves. The purpose of this TV movie is not to tell everyone what to think or to decide, it's to spark debate, to get people to ask questions.
Yes, it's flawed. Ironic, really, eh? The ending simply can't keep up the tension of the middle of the story--but then, once judgement day has been announced, you can hardly expect it to. Still, a great piece of drama. The sad thing is that this movie could never be shown on US TV, and it almost didn't make it to UK TV.
Rating:  - preachy - but not in the way you'd imagine
I checked this out because I wanted to take a look at what the new Doctor Who people have been doing in the recent past. The Second Coming isn't quite as cosmic, but it certainly engages us in some comparable flights of fancy. Steve Baxter (Christopher Eccleston) has an epiphany one night when he's out on the town with some mates. He reckons he's become the Son of God and he proceeds to turn night into day at Maine Road football ground in order to demonstrate his divinely-chosen status (a bit like David Icke, except with powers). His immediate friends take their time to come to terms with this and despite becoming the `new disciples' some of them - notably Judith his girlfriend (Lesley Sharp) - remain sceptical. Through the media he tells the world that they must come up with a `Third Testament'. It later transpires that if they do not, the end of the world will soon follow.
What are this messiah's credentials? Well, he spends forty days in the wilderness which is Saddleworth Moor and he has no earthly father - it turns out that his dad is infertile and couldn't have fathered him. This tickled me. Did writer Russell T. Davis pass his GCSE in Religious Studies, do we think? I couldn't really work out whether the religious symbolism was unconsciously corny and naïve or whether it aimed at giving us a laugh. I'd like to think the latter. Steve, curiously, isn't what we might describe as spiritual - certainly not religious. He swears all the time, boozes and although not quite loutish, is somewhat laddish. He's a laddish messiah. His disciples swear at him and he insults them back. (Message to southerners - we in the north are not all like this, despite the plethora of dramas which suggest otherwise: Preston Front, Our Friends in the North, etc. Writers do seem to have this desire to patronise us thus.)
What's noticeable about the founders of the major world religions is that they managed to espouse some degree of religious wisdom. Steve, who just witters nonsensically to the crowds, seems to lack this facility. Is he meant to be devoid of wisdom? Are we asking too much of Russell T. Davis to place some in his mouth? Could he have done so had he wished? Presumably our writer would need to possess some himself! (Jury's out.) It turns out that the party piece belongs to the sceptical girlfriend who clearly becomes the mouthpiece for the programme's message.
So what happens? Despite almost two hours of waiting for Judgement Day, with little action or plot development we eventually come to learn that our messiah is something of a damp squib. He ends up at the girlfriend's home where she feeds him a dish of spaghetti a la rat poison which he takes willingly but not before we discover that he is really just a sort of encapsulation or epitome of human religiosity. Enlightened humanity - Judith - finally comes to realise that she can and must live without him and she spits him out. They argue for a while before atheism wins out and Steve chomps down the poisoned pasta (after the two hours I found myself saying `bon appetit'). So we get the sermon, although it's a secular one which declares the futility of religious belief. But this messiah seemed to me to be almost devoid of any meaningful religious ideas anyway. You can't debunk what doesn't exist. Steve can't be a foil for atheism if he IS a kind of atheism. I suppose that we do end up questioning Russell T Davis's understanding of spirituality, not to say he should necessarily adhere to religion or spirituality, but perhaps to understand it to come degree. And yes, there is a naivety and a corniness which underpins all this third-form philosophy, typical of so many young people working within the arts.
It's a pity that the message of the piece couldn't have been delivered within the actual context of the drama itself. What we have is a two hour TV play followed by a secular sermon, subtext puked out and all. We do have an epilogue, however, where our new-found heroine is hilariously transfigured at the supermarket. I do recommend The Second Coming for amusement, but for enlightenment you'd better have something else to hand.
Rating:  - Thought provoking, but not satisfying.
The two-part television movie called the Second Coming appears to be influenced by one of the great poems of the 20th Century by William Butler Yeats. The following lines of Yeats' poem The Second Coming that are appopriate for the film are these: Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are filled with passionate insensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The revelation at hand is that Steve Baxter, the main character in the film, is the Son of God. Standing in the middle of a soccer field at night, he tries to tell the assembled crowd in Manchester, England that he is God's son. No one pays much attention to him until night turns into day at the soccer field. This miracle astounds the crowd and can be seen for many miles, drawing the attention of the media.
Baxter becomes an immediate, world-wide celebrity. He challenges the people of the world to send him something he calls The Third Testament, a new rule for mankind. Within the space of a couple of days thousands of testaments are sent to Manchester. Steve can't possibly read them all and quickly gives up trying. In frustration he announces that the end of the world is at hand. Soon after Steve's announcement, everywhere on earth people believe that Doomsday has arrived. As Yeats says, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
A day or so later Baxter is sitting in a pub with his friends when a bomb explodes, destroying the entire pub, but not Steve or any of his disciples. Steve believes that this second miracle is a sign that he is indestructible, and it appears for a time that he is correct.
This brief plot summary is all that I can share without spoiling the ending of the film. At this point in the story I was intrigued. The miracles I described did occur in the film. Baxter might be who he says he is. Unfortunately, as Yeats says, The Best (Steve and his disciples) lack all conviction while the worst (devils hiding in some of the citizens of Manchester) Are filled with passionate intensity.
The director of what turns out to be a most confusing plot seems unable to cope with Yeats' vision. From truly miraculous occurrences we move inexplicably to the conclusion that God is dead and we are on our own to make the best of things. How we arrive at this ending, given the evidence at hand, was a disappointment to me. Instead of a denial of the reality of the dramatized miracles, the director needed to be true to Yeats' last lines: And some rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
At its best, the film The Second Coming is thought provoking. At its worst it reduces a complex vision to a made for television sitcom.
Rating: - Left nothing but fog in my brain and a hole in my wallet
I'm a great fan of apocolyptic and futuristic drama -- everything from 1984, to Twilight Zone, to Mad Max -- and I know when the message is profound and communicated effectively, and when it's not. In this instance, a couple of special effects scenes that convince the world the second messiah has come, combined with a bit of dialogue about mankind's need to clean up our act lest the end come, adds up to nothing memorable except frustration and disappointed expectations. Those behind this item may have had something to say, but it got lost along the way and left only a highly idiosyncratic story line and dialogue which is likely better understood by the writer than by anyone else. I know many different kinds of critical thinking people, but can think of few of them who wouldn't be well advised to avoid this one.
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