Lap it up.
Year: 2013
Monday’s “All the pick-ups for Fall 2013 and all the cancellations and renewals from this season” news
Film
- New Star Wars to shoot in the UK
Film casting
- Chloe Moertz to star in The Equalizer, Michael Sloan to write novels
- Sami Gayle, Cameron Manghan et al join Vampire Academy
UK TV
- David Tennant and Rosamund Pike to star in What We Did On Our Holiday
- Universal acquires CTV’s Motive
- Lovefilm acquires History’s Vikings
- Friday ratings: Life of Crime gets 3.9m viewers
US TV
- ABC renews: The Neighbors, The Middle, Last Man Standing, Modern Family, Once Upon A Time, Revenge, Suburgatory, Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, Castle and Nashville
- ABC cancels: Family Tools…
- …and How To Live With Your Parents, Body of Proof, Red Widow and Malibu Country
- NBC renews: Community
- NBC cancels: Smash, The New Normal and Go On
- CBS cancels: CSI: NY, Golden Boy, Vegas and Rules of Engagement
- TNT cancels: Monday Mornings and Southland
- USA cancels: Burn Notice
- SyFy renews: Defiance
- Thursday ratings: Scandal hits series high
- Friday ratings: Blue Bloods, Touch down
New US TV shows
- CBS green lights: Crazy Ones, Mom, Hostages, Intelligence, The Millers and We Are Men
- …Reckless…
- …and Friends With Better Lives
- CBS red lights: Advocates and Beverly Hills Cop
- ABC green lights: Once Upon A Time spin-off, Mixology, The Returned, Killer Women, Lucky 7, Betrayal, Trophy Wife, Influence, The Goldbergs, Super Fun Night, Cullen Brothers comedy and SHIELD
- NBC green lights: Blacklist, Night Shift, Welcome To The Family…
- …and Chicago PD, Ironside and Undateable
- TBS green lights: Ground Floor
- USA developing Matt Nix’s Complications
New US TV show casting
- Alex Kapp Horner off Fox’s Surviving Jack
- Lindsay Sloane off NBC’s Sean Saves The World
- Parker Posey off NBC’s The Family Guide
- Casting on TNT’s Murder In The First and ABC Family’s Ravenswood
Classic TV
Your handy guide to true religions on TV – Other religions
This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.
Other religions
Religions outside of the previous categories are much rarer on TV. Although very occasionally Native American religions have featured on US TV, for example, AFAIK they’ve never been shown to be true except in shows like Star Trek: Voyager that later reveal that science is behind any truth they might have. Nevertheless, there have been one or two shows that depict religions other than the ones mentioned above.
Continue reading “Your handy guide to true religions on TV – Other religions”
Classic TV
Your handy guide to true religions on TV – Celtic, Western and Northern Germanic religions + Wicca
This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.
Celtic, Western and Northern Germanic religions + Wicca
The belief in the deities worshipped in Scandinavia, Germany and Britain until Christianity took over has seen some uptake on TV. The most famous of these gods were the Norse gods Odin, Thor, et al, but Anglo-Saxon gods include Wayland the Smithy and folk gods such as Herne the Hunter have all managed to show up. While often these have been part of fantasy shows, so not taken entirely seriously by the authors, some shows have raised them in works contemplating national identity, regarding pagan beliefs as important parts of ‘Welshness’ or ‘Englishness’, for example.
However, writers have usually played fast and loose, and with most of the pagan religions in these areas being reconstructionist, the question of authenticity to the original religions is difficult, relying instead of pagan-like activity created by the authors. Frequently, where the shows have invoked paganism and shown it to be true, it’s been shown to be based on some kind of science (cf Children of the Stones, Sky, Quatermass and Doctor Who).
However, there are some exceptions.
Classic TV
Your handy guide to true religions on TV – Hellenism and Religio Romana
This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.
Hellenism
The Greek pagan religion featuring Zeus and the other Olympians isn’t quite a dead religion, but it’s close. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most influential, dominating Western literature, film and TV to a far greater extent than those in a far healthier state, such as Hinduism. As well as adaptations of Greek tragedies on TV, there have been many adaptations of many Greek myths and the gods have shown up in shows set in the modern day as well as the past. Atlantis, which is currently being made by BBC1, would appear to feature elements of Hellenic religion as well as the Minoan religion of Crete.
Religio Romana
Again, another religion that’s not quite dead and still gets featured occasionally in TV shows. A syncretism of native Italian religion and Hellenism, Religio Romana and its literature dominated Western understanding of Hellenism and myths until the 14th century, when an understanding of Greek and Greek literature became to permeate through after the fall of Constantinople. It wasn’t until the late 19th and 20th centuries, in fact, that academics realised the two were separate, yet in the last century or so, despite the occasional blurring (e.g. Hercules/Heracles, Wonder Woman’s Ares/Mars, etc), Hellenistic literature and Hellenism have now almost totally replaced Religio Romana in the public consciousness.
There are no Roman gods in modern-day TV shows, as far as I’m aware; no adaptation of The Aeneid or the Metamorphoses of Ovid. However, people are far more interested in period dramas set in Roman times than in classical Athens (Athens’ misogyny might be responsible for that) or Sparta (everyone exercising naked in olive oil outdoors?), perhaps also because of the Roman empire’s continuing influence on everything from architecture to politics to this very day.
However, one of the differences between Roman and Greek religions is that the Roman emperors became gods on their death, so technically any show that depicts a Roman emperor technically is showing a possible future Roman god. How many shows have followed through on that?
Continue reading “Your handy guide to true religions on TV – Hellenism and Religio Romana”