Akin Ojumu
The Grateful Dead singer Jerry Garcia has been the subject of numerous tributes after his death, but perhaps the most flattering came last year when he inspired the character of God in the short-lived animated series God, the Devil and Bob.
Given tongue by a languid James Garner, God, who seemingly hails from the West Coast, sports a potbelly, a Hawaiian shirt and a thick white beard. In the opposing corner stands the devil, voiced by Alan Cumming as a decadent cabaret host.
Deadheads loved the show, the critics too. It was sly and gently irreverent closer to The Simpsons and King of the Hill than, say, to South Park.
The series now on M-Net begins with a barroom bet between God and the devil. Can a slovenly Detroit carworker, Bob Alman, do enough good deeds to save the world? Each week, Alman faces a new moral dilemma armed with conflicting advice from his rival mentors. “My soul has become a battleground for a war between God and Satan,” Alman explains to his wife in an early episode. “But I know you’re just gonna make that sound weird.”
One plotline has Satan torment Alman by materialising as the cute boyfriend of his teenage daughter. But this animated tug of war between good and evil failed to reach biblical proportions in the United States; NBC pulled it following a wave of protest.
Religious groups complained, advertisers shied away and 22 of NBC’s local affiliates refused to air it. That’s more stations than refused the ground-breaking first series of NYPD Blue.
God, the Devil and Bob died in the US after four episodes. Outraged fans vented their frustration on its website.
Frankly, it is hard to see what all the fuss was about. Turning a latter-day Book of Job into prime-time entertainment may have been adventurous, but it was hardly blasphemous. And in this animated morality tale in contrast to the Jesus-Satan encounters in South Park a rather easy-going deity keeps the upper hand.
The show swipes at corporate miscreants Exxon, Microsoft rather than at the Scriptures. Making God an ageing, genial hippie was always liable to provoke the Bible Belt, but is entirely in harmony with the cartoon’s light, playful touch. “It’s not my intention to raise the red flag about religion,” says creator and producer Matthew Carlson. “I want to be irreverent. I’m not trying to make a major comment about religion. I don’t expect theologians to take all this seriously.”
With hindsight, it’s easy to accuse Carlson of naivety. Aside from the antics of television evangelists, religion has little place in mainstream US television. When it does feature, it’s handled with kid gloves, as in Highway to Heaven and, more recently, Touched by an Angel. But God, the Devil and Bob tested the prime-time boundaries at a time when politicians were keeping eagle eyes on the entertainment industry on the eve of the presidential election.
“It was a little risky for network television,” says New York Times critic Caryn James. ‘But compared to the type of shows you see on Comedy Central [South Park] or HBO [Sex and the City, The Sopranos], the content was relatively benign.”
James claims the show’s demise was hastened by modest ratings. Scheduled mid-season against ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? God, the Devil and Bob certainly wasn’t an instant success. But NBC was suspiciously quick to cut its losses.
The fate of God, the Devil and Bob was similar to that of Clerks, a controversial animated series that, after repeated postponements, lasted just two episodes. Director Kevin Smith (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma) railed against ABC for their treatment of the cartoon. Smith’s view was that Clerks “really pushes the edge of the envelope, but … doesn’t push the edge of the envelope the way of kids sitting around saying ‘ass’ or ‘dick’.” It was still deemed too hot to broadcast in the US. One episode featured a gag about the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986.
The BBC apparently has no such qualms about God, the Devil and Bob. After buying the show last year, it held preview screenings for staff and religious groups, and received favourable feedback. Ernie Rae, head of religious programmes, compared it to a “modern morality tale”. And according to Sophie Turner Laing, the BBC’s controller of programme acquisitions: “The religious leaders who saw the film were quite optimistic that the show could deliver a religious message to an audience who might otherwise avoid one. I get the feeling that we are rather more tolerant. No one I have spoken to finds the show offensive.”
Interestingly, even in the States the casting of God as Jerry Garcia was seen as a plus point. “People thought that was pretty funny,” says the New York Times’s Caryn James. There may even be an additional bonus for viewers drawn to the kindly, bearded figure with the wise words. His teachings are widely available. Just look under G in any good record shop.
Robert Kirby’sChannel Vision will be back next week