Over the years, no
subject has been approached with such caution in primetime as religion. Steamy
sex on the tube is now a given. Race relations have been a sitcom staple since
Archie Bunker. No social issue seems to be out of bounds.
But what we’ve almost never seen are ongoing series characters who take religion seriously. None of the typical TV broods of the ’50s or ’60s ever seemed to. Not the Andersons or the Cleavers, or the Douglases or the Petries. Though almost everyone in sight needed a spiritual pick-me-up, how many on Dallas or Dynasty ever fell to their knees in prayer? On TV, even priests and nuns need some special talent to find status as regulars. Crime fighting or...flying.
This despite the fact that, by every measure, most Americans continue to believe in some kind of god. Indeed, according to a poll appearing recently in Newsweek, only four percent of us “have no religious affiliation.”
Then, again – for this was what the survey in Newsweek was looking to measure – when Hollywood’s top writers and executives were asked the same question, the percentage leaped to 45. “This is just not a spiritual place,” understates one producer. “Let’s face it, for a lot of people here, religion is hocus-pocus.” Add to that the more important truth that programmers keep their jobs by steering clear of subject matter apt to offend or – even worse – bore, and we’ve got the opposite of a mystery.
Yet things have been changing. thirtysomething’s Michael Steadman, the ultimate careerist, used to struggle mightily to connect with his spiritual side. On Brooklyn Bridge, religious ritual is part of family life. Last season, even The Simpsons’ Krusty the Clown had a wrenching crisis of faith.
No recent show, though, has treated faith more seriously than Homefront, the ABC drama set in the immediate post-WWII years and about to begin its second season. As its characters range across the social spectrum, so their religious attitudes vary widely; from indifference, to hypocrisy, to deep and abiding faith.
“There was no modern-day cynicism in such people,” says Homefront executive producer Bernard Lechowick. “The intensity of their faith informed every choice in their lives. And those lives were rich ones.”
That is why the show summons up such powerful feelings in the world as we find it today. Even – maybe especially – among those of us who find it so much harder to believe. In one particularly memorable episode, a young black man, badly stung by racism, demands to know how his mother can maintain her belief in human good. “That’s not faith,” he says, “it’s pretending.”
“No,” she says evenly, “pretending is easy. Faith is hard.”