Exorcist John Deed

So, Apparitions, with Martin Shaw as a silver fox priest fighting Satan's forces on Earth - the usual suspects are calling it "TV's most shocking drama ever", which even for the usual suspects demonstrates a quite shocking level of stupidity. This is the most thoroughly christian thing I've seen on TV since...I'm not even sure since what, to be quite honest*. The Devil is real. The Catholic Church can sometimes be a bit hidebound, but is the only force standing against him and his legions. If you own The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, well, it doesn't *necessarily* mean you're possessed by demons and prone to a spot of child-rape, but it's definitely an indicator. If anyone should be complaining about this one, it's the atheists; so far as I can see they're not, because as a rule they have grasped such concepts as 'fiction' and 'freedom of expression'. It's a pretty good drama, but it's also an hour of primetime christian propaganda - and yet still the complaints come from the christians.

*I was going to say Strange, though even there Richard Coyle had been defrocked, and the treatment of demons was a bit more fantasy, a bit less orthodox. And it turns out that like Apparitions, Strange was directed by Joe Ahearne. Whom I knew to have Doctor Who credits to his name - hence my watching - but whom I hadn't realised was also behind much-missed vampire thriller Ultraviolet (not to be confused with the abysmal film of the same name).