It seems every day brings a new horror story. Low birth rates may counter overpopulation, but they hurt countries with large economies. Animal extinction is bad for both our planet and computer algorithms. We’re running out of sand, millennials are killing both marriageanddivorce, and for one terrifying day, it seemed the streets were going to be filled with sexy Handmaid’s Tale costumes come Halloween.
No wonder the nonpartisan fact tank Pew Research Center reported in June that more and more young people are neither religious nor believe in God. So, is now the best or the worst time for a show like the new CBS series God Friended Me?
Created by Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, the drama premieres September 30 and follows Miles (The Mayor’s Brandon Micheal Hall, an actual, honest-to-God son of a preacher lady), a New York-based millennial who promotes his atheist views on his podcast—much to the chagrin of his father (Scandal’s Joe Morton), a reverend who preaches the Good Book from a more traditional pulpit. Their family feud is running hot until someone (or some being) purporting to be God sends Miles a Facebook friend request, then push notifications with names of other troubled souls who may need his help.
The series is the latest in a long line of shows that have attempted to monetize theological debates or spiritual journeys, with varying results. CBS’s own Joan of Arcadia was a critical darling that scored a smattering of Emmy nominations in its two seasons, and AMC’s Preacher revels in such dark comedy and absurdity that it’s easy to forget its title character’s former occupation. But since the heights of Touched by an Angel, most primetime series about characters discovering that they’ve been selected by a recognizably Judeo-Christian deity to serve some higher purpose have faltered—from the CW’s Reaper to Fox’s Wonderfalls, NBC’s The Book of Daniel, and ABC’s Kevin (Probably) Saves the World and Eli Stone. Inserting religious themes into a family drama seems to be an easier sell, as in the cases of the WB’s (and then the CW’s) 7th Heaven and HBO’s Big Love.
Beverley Mitchell in 7th Heaven.
By Paul McCallum/Spelling Prod/Everett Collection.
As Ron Simon, curator for the Paley Center for Media, pointed out in an interview, American television has been intertwined with religion practically since the medium’s inception. The 1950s program Life Is Worth Living, which aired on DuMont Television Network and then ABC, was largely a vehicle for Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen to preach Catholicism directly to the camera, a practice that proved popular enough to once beat Milton Berle in the ratings. Networks may continue to push these stories to this day, Simon said, because “even if there’s a decline in organized religion,” he said, “there’s always something spiritual about the American experience.” Our culture also welcomes inspirational fare—particularly at a time when the nation is politically and socially divided, and “people are thinking in binary terms of good and evil.”
God Friended Me, then, might become our next tear-jerking, feel-good weekly drama, a chance for softies and skeptics to come together—this year’s answer to NBC’s This Is Us or ABC’s The Good Doctor.
“The thesis of this show is we are all connected, and there is goodness in all of us,” Wynbrandt said. “The hope of the show is to focus on the positive when there is so much negative. . . . when, honestly, we all wake up in the morning and go on Twitter [and] you’re instantly depressed.”
While the show’s first episode—the only one released in advance to the press—has a procedural mentality that makes it feel right at home on CBS, the series’s creators stress that they are not beholden to this formula. They also hope viewers won’t get too sucked into trying to solve the mystery of who (or what?) is behind the God Facebook account. Instead, Lilien said that his and Wynbrandt’s show hopes to find the “middle ground between a believer and a nonbeliever.”
Lilien and Wynbrandt also maintained that their show will explore multiple dogmas and religions. But much like other recent God-focused shows, the series’s overall concept seems rooted in a specific religious worldview: “a very Protestant, and a very Christian, way of looking at God,” as Stewart Hoover, director of University of Colorado-Boulder’s Center for Media, Religion, and Culture said. While he thinks the show could make its conception of God compatible with Jewish and Muslim belief systems, “I don’t know how you’d make a Buddhist version of that, or how you’d make a Hindu version or that.” (Wynbrandt, for his part, told me that the show’s writers rely on research to get different religions right; prep for an upcoming episode on interfaith marriage, for example, included conversations with the Muslim Public Affairs Council.)
Then again, the show is really less about religion than it is “about human connection, and that we’re all connected in these interesting ways.” Television writer-producer Michael Schur hit on a similar strategy when designing his much-lauded NBC comedy, The Good Place, which returns for its third season September 27. Schur said in an interview that he spent about a month delving into various religious theories while developing the series, which originally centered on four recently deceased characters. Then he realized that “religion was sort of irrelevant,” he said, because his show was actually about ethics—and would focus less on theology than lessons and debates on how to be a good person.
The cast of The Good Place, and a burrito.
By Colleen Hayes/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images.
The Good Place makes a point in its pilot to stress that—at least in the show’s world—no one religion gets mortality and “the great beyond” totally correct. When religion is mentioned at all, it’s used as a joke setup or for the sake of character development—as when Filipino-American Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto) is mistaken for a Buddhist monk from Taiwan because, according to the character, “Heaven is so racist.” Schur has also made a point of not using religious iconography like harps or halos in the show’s marketing.
“Religion is tribal, and people who strongly believe in one religion, it’s a zero-sum game—and you mostly do not believe in another religion or the tenants of another religion,” he explained. This, of course “causes a lot of friction, and it’s dicey to talk about, especially on TV in a quick way—in 21 minutes or whatever. Ethics is not tribal.”
Schur himself didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household, but he does remember his mom watching Touched by an Angel. “I don’t think you can do that show now,” he said. “The combination of sentiment and also, sort of, procedural qualities mixed with the fact that they were explicitly Christian shows.”
“Part of the reason I wanted to avoid saying who God is or whether God even exists is or whose conception of the afterlife is correct—[and] obviously even by doing that, you’re making a statement of some kind—is it’s exclusionary,” Schur continued. “It’s like, if this is not your belief system, this show has no use for you.”
Maybe God Friended Me’s inclusive approach will win it fans from various backgrounds. Maybe, as Professor Hoover suggested, the show will attract faithful viewers who want to support a project that puts God front and center, and hold out hope that it will find its way to the screens of wayward souls—like grandparents who go to church to pray for their misbegotten offspring. And if the show truly is a hit, then perhaps it could even restore the public’s faith in Facebook. Now that would be a modern-day miracle.
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Full ScreenPhotos:The Most Fascinating Celebrity Godparents
Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus
This godparent-godchild duo came to be after country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus first recorded his hit “Achy, Breaky Heart” in the early 1990s. In the process, he got to know the legendary Parton, and eventually made her his daughter’s godmother. Since then, Parton has dubbed herself Miley Cyrus’s “fairy godmother.” The two have even performed Parton’s hit “Jolene” together. “I’m just real proud of her. She does not need my advice, but she’s often asking for information and advice, and I tell her what I know, but I think the girl’s doing all right without me,” Parton said of her goddaughter, in a 2012 CBS interview.
Photo: by Tyler Golden/NBC/Getty Images.
Macaulay Culkin and Paris Jackson
Culkin was a close friend of Michael Jackson when the actor was just a young child star. Jackson named Culkin godfather of his daughter, Paris, now 18, who, in December 2016, shared a photo after she gave her famous godfather a pedicure.
Photo: left, by Gary Miller/FilmMagic; right, by Lester Cohen/WireImage.
Lady Gaga and Elijah and Zachary Furnish-John
Gaga is godmother to both of Elton John’s young sons, Elijah and Zachary. “She’s a great role model, she’s young, [and] she’s been a great godmother to Zachary. . . . We’re all bonkers in this business, but we’re human beings at the same time,” John told Glamour U.K. after he and husband David Furnish named the singer their second son’s godmother in 2013.
Photo: left, by Tom Pennington/Getty Images; right, by Dave Benett/Elton John AIDS Foundation/WireImage.
Bono and Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie selected Bono as the godfather of their twins, Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, when they were born in 2008. According to reports from Digital Spy at the time, Pitt had admired the U2 front man for years, and the couple had gotten to know him well.
Photo: left, by DVT/Star Max/GC Images; right, by Jun Sato/GC Images.
Steven Spielberg and Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow
Just call Steven Spielberg godfather to the stars—Barrymore and Paltrow, both from entertainment families—are goddaughters of the famous director. Barrymore, who starred in Spielberg’s E.T. at age seven, became Spielberg’s goddaughter when she was a teen, reports the New York Daily News. As Paltrow’s godfather, he has treated the actress, who made a small appearance in his 1991 film Hook, to trips on his yacht around the Mediterranean, [reports U.K. publication Stylist](http://www.stylist.co.uk/people/surprising-celebrity-godparents.
Photo: by SGranitz/WireImage.
Henry Winkler and Bryce Dallas Howard
Howard’s father, actor and director Ron Howard, made his Happy Days co-star his daughter’s godfather, and the actress knows she lucked out with that selection. During an interview with The Talk in August 2016, she said, “He’s just the most wonderful man. It’s great as a kid to have adults who you can go to who are mentors. They don’t have the ability to ground you, but they do have the wisdom of being someone who loves you and who cares about you and is aware.” When it came to choosing her own child’s godfather, Dallas Howard chose actor and The Book of Mormon breakout star, Josh Gad.
Photo: left, by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images; right, by David Livingston/Getty Images.
Joan Collins and Cara Delevingne
British royalty Collins was named Delevingne’s godmother when she was born in 1992, but as Dame Collins told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, she was 1 of 16 godparents to the model. “I asked [Delevingne’s parents], ‘Why do you have so many godparents?’ ” she said. “And they said, ‘Well, in case any of them die.’ ”
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