TV Review | The Second Coming written by Russell T Davies

Having brought homosexuality to prime time with his acclaimed series Queer as Folk, a little over a decade ago Stephen Russell Davies – better known to the masses by his nom de plume, Russell T Davies – decided that he was going to stir the pot some more by breaking an even bigger taboo. What could get people talking more than a show about three archetypal gay men hanging around Canal Street in the ’90s? Well, short of bringing back Doctor Who, you’d have to resurrect Jesus Christ.

And so that’s exactly what he did – in the guise of a twat from Manchester.

Commissioning a writer as contentious as Davies to pen a drama that even dabbles in spiritual matters, let alone take Christianity’s messiah in a direction that, at best, isn’t going to sit all that well with his flock, suggests that ITV were looking for either trouble or ratings - or, perhaps, both. Having been reared on images of beards and sandals, most Christians probably don’t picture Christopher Eccleston’s “daft old face” when they think of their saviour, and I’m even more confident that they don’t imagine him telling priests to “piss off” and necking pints. Indeed, at a first glance, The Second Coming seems intent on inflaming the channel’s Christian demographic, but, as is invariably the case with a Davies script, it’s ultimately far cleverer than its initial shock tactics imply.

What Davies does with The Second Coming is little different from what Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have done more recently with Sherlock – he’s taken an old story and updated it for the 21st century. Of course, popular though they are, the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle haven’t had anything like the same effect on two millennia of worldwide culture as the canon of the New Testament has, but the principle is still essentially the same. As the story was originally told, Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin mother; this time around, he’s the son of a dad who shoots blanks. Back in the day, Jesus broke bread with his buddies before one of them called in the Romans to drag him off to martyrdom; in Davies’ follow-up, the last supper becomes spag bol in the kitchen, and that old rugged cross is replaced with a quicker and more violent means of departure that’s much more in keeping with the fast and furious pace of 2003. As told by the gospels, Jesus spent years practising carpentry before answering his calling; Davies’ script has Steve toiling away in a video shop until an epiphany borne of a kiss sends him scurrying for the moors, all but driven insane by his newly-awoken divinity.

Where the narratives begin to diverge is in how their respective sons of God go about saving humanity’s endangered souls. As this is more of a sequel than a reimagining (albeit one that we can safely say is “not canon” in the truest sense of the phrase – more Christ Unbound), Steve’s been Jesus once and learnt his lessons well. Accordingly, there’s no softly, softly from our Mr Baxter this time around: he tells the world to furnish him with a “Third Testament”, a book that must change humanity’s course forever, or else it’s the proverbial “End of Days”.

Now even though this is more of a fact than a threat, this sounds much more like the Old Testament’s no-nonsense God than it does the New Testament’s gentler God the Son, but the devil is in the detail. Eccleston’s Christ.2 is blighted by the mind of a moron; imagine Karl Pilkington, swap the “head like a fucking orange” for big ears, remove the spite and that’s our Steve - a hapless Northern nobody, suddenly imbued with a holiness that he’s just slightly too thick to fully master. Throughout, the viewer gets the sense that Steve isn’t quite getting the full message from God – his brain hasn’t got the requisite bandwidth for the download, to misquote a metaphor from the script – which makes him vulnerable but terrifying at the same time as we watch him fudge the world towards an apocalypse. This is the man upon whom the fate of not just the world, but Heaven and Hell too, turns. It’s a sympathetic and mesmerising yet deeply terrifying performance, with hindsight eerily evocative of Eccleston’s Doctor in Doctor Who in spirit, if not in intellect.

 
Almost, if not equally, gripping is Lesley Sharp’s Jude – Steve’s unrequited crush and greatest sceptic. The Second Coming is her story, really, as it’s through her that we see a kiss transform Steve from an ordinary idiot into an Almighty one; through her that we see Steve’s radical actions start to tear the world apart; through her that we witness the real implications of the second coming, for is God is real, then so is Satan. From the first episode’s opening scene to the second’s cold and final one, Sharp anchors the tale to the mundane world that we all know, making the madness of the second coming feel all the more real; all the more frightening. Indeed, I don’t recall ever watching anything that’s so unsettling on such a basic, psychological level as this two-part serial is.

The supporting cast is just as impressive, comprising a veritable who’s who of British television, including Mark Benton (illustrious Auton victim, star of countless Nationwide ads and recent Strictly Come Dancing contestant); Annabelle Apsion (Shameless); Ace Bhatti (The Sarah Jane Adventures); and even Kevin Webster’s dad off Coronation Street, who damned near steals the show with his sinister second-episode performance. Just as extraordinary is Adrian Shergold’s direction, which despite being constrained by a television budget feels consciously cinematic, particularly with set pieces like the defining “Maine Road miracle” and the first episode’s explosive cliffhanger.

 
But The Second Coming’s greatest strength is much more abstract than its spectacle. Unlike most dramas, it has an ability to make people who don’t often turn their mind to such things consider their place in creation, whether they want to or not. Even watching The Second Coming through the eyes of an agnostic who puts no stock in any religion (morally laudable and duly comforting though they all may be), it’s hard not to be taken aback by the sheer weight of the subject matter, particularly when it’s delivered with such candid fervour. The line, “You stupid people. It’s finally happened. Heaven’s empty. And Hell’s bursting at the seams,” for instance, is one of the bleakest things that I’ve ever heard; it implies that we’re so lost, so hollow, so morally bankrupt that everyone who’s ever lived, even the very best of us, either couldn’t hack it in Heaven or didn’t get an invite to start with.

Such abject worthlessness is admittedly buoyed by the drama’s conclusion, however, which serves as more of a grim counterpoint to the resurrection first described in the letters of Paul rather than it does a modern refashioning of it. Whilst I’m sure that those of a religious persuasion, any religious persuasion, will balk at Davies’ Klingon-inspired ending, which sees the final closure of “the family business”, I prefer to see it as the ultimate vote of confidence in humanity rather than an ultimate denunciation of it. The world that survives Judgement Day is full of people that have to stand on their own; work hard to fix their own problems; and, most importantly, focus on the pain and pleasures of their one short life rather than waste it preparing for the next. But a writer of Davies’ calibre is smart enough not to push his own atheist views too hard, as to do so would have ultimately defeated The Second Coming’s mission to provoke even debate. Instead, the second episode’s final moments rouse a burning doubt in the viewer - its final conversation is palpably flat; there’s a pause, an evasion, a strong implication that the world is somehow emptier without religion in it, and it’s up to the viewer to form his or her own view. It even left me with a knot in my gut, not so much for my own sake, but for the sakes of those like Johnny Tyler, who have nothing in this world and could only look to the next - until now.

Thought-provoking, chilling and occasionally surprisingly comic, The Second Coming is one of the boldest dramas of the naughty noughties, not to mention one of the most fair and frank treatises on religion that have ever found their way onto television. If you’ve had enough of Father Christmas already and fancy dipping a toe in the more sacred side of the season, then I’d highly recommend tracking down this DVD and giving your soul a stir. At less than four quid, it’s cheaper than some Christmas cards and a damned sight more fulfilling.

The Second Coming is currently only available on DVD. The cheapest online retailer is Play, where it can be purchased for just £3.84.