It's only because
of controversies involving belief that Miller wanted to articulate his disbelief, he says. Pictured: the host returns to the back row of a London synagogue, scene of his youthful doubting.
Of all the religious topics given airtime on public TV, one aspect of faith in God—the rationale for not having any—has never been covered with the depth and historical sweep of a documentary series.
A Brief History of Disbelief, Jonathan Miller’s three-part BBC series about atheism, set out to fill that gap and is being offered for broadcast on public TV stations by Virginia-based Executive Program Services. On the series’ release date, May 4 [2007], Miller is scheduled to appear on PBS’s Bill Moyers’ Journal.
[As the U.S. broadcasts began in early May, public TV stations reaching 96.8 percent of TV households had signed to carry the series, EPS said.]
Miller, a Cambridge-educated physician, comedian, producer and director, will be familiar to Anglophiles with long memories. He was a founder of Beyond the Fringe, a British satirical troupe influential in the 1960s. Miller went on to produce and direct dramas for the BBC; he also drew from his medical knowledge to write and present the BBC documentary series The Body in Question and States of Mind, carried by PBS, according to veteran producers and programmers. A series of Shakespeare plays that he produced in the 1980s also was distributed by PBS.
A Brief History of Disbelief, which debuted in Britain three years ago,is an inventive, provocative essay combining history, philosophy and Miller’s observations about his own rejection of religious faith. Miller traces the development of atheistic thought back to an obscure group of Greek philosophers and interviews many influential contemporary disbelievers—including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion; anthropologist Pascal Boyer; and philosopher Colin McGinn, one of the authors interviewed last year on Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason.
But The History of Disbelief is more travelogue than talking heads. Miller visits imaginatively filmed locales such as Ground Zero in New York; Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy; and the British Museum in London.
Independent producer Alvin Perlmutter, a longtime colleague of Moyers, acquired U.S. broadcast rights to A History of Disbelief after securing underwriting for its broadcast from several humanist organizations. He had seen a poor-quality DVD of the 2004 series and was so impressed that he contacted the BBC about it.
When he finally reached someone who could discuss rights, Permutter said, the BBC marketing rep told him the Brits had thought the series was “too controversial for an American audience” and wouldn’t make any money as a DVD release. “I said I would like to buy the rights to it.”
“This is fresh—of all the programming we have on public television, this has never been broadcast,” Perlmutter said. “Not that it reflects my personal views, but it is something a TV audience in America should have an opportunity to see.”
“I felt that public television has as part of its mission to open people’s minds to other points of view that you don’t have to agree with,” Perlmutter said. Miller doesn’t proselytize for atheism in the show; he matter-of-factly shares his personal views and outlines the views of others.
In the first episode, Miller describes the series as a necessary exploration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which he describes as “the most powerful expression of religious fanaticism” in recent history. “[A]t a moment when intense commitments to different forms of monotheistic religion have acquired such intense political connotations, it’s important to indicate that widespread suspicion of disbelief is becoming a real threat to free thought.”
In the first installment, Miller promises viewers that he will employ no dramatic recreations or eye candy to present this history. But producers did adopt some dramatic devices that bring power and light to the subject: a black-clad actor reads key passages of disbelieving philosophers and scientists, and archival film clips cleverly illustrate or amplify elements of Miller’s script.
Stylistically, The History of Disbelief evokes the feel of old-school BBC—Miller in rumpled tweeds, using phrases such as “impenetrable cyclorama of religious imagery” to describe Giotto’s fresco cycle of the Virgin Mary. The producers mark transitions with black billboards quoting famous disbelievers and the syncopated tapping of typewriter keys and the rip of a carriage return.
The programs will be edited to bring them down to standard length. Two potentially controversial scenes will be among those dropped: a scene in New York’s Balthazar restaurant in which Miller, in an unscripted conversation with fellow disbelievers, makes a flippant remark about religiosity; and a concluding remark to the camera that takes a swipe at President Bush.
“Because BBC programs are 59 minutes long, I had to bring it down to length,” Perlmutter said. “I made determinations of what should come out.”
Before sealing the distribution deal, Perlmutter asked EPS to gauge stations’ willingness to broadcast the program. The positive responses recently made the program offer official. As of last week, stations reaching 88 percent of the country’s TV households had informed EPS that they plan to air it, according to Alan Foster, EPS president.
Programmers who worry that A History of Disbelief will provoke angry reactions from their viewers may want to consider the response to a report aired recently by Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, “The Mainstreaming of Atheism.” The six-minute piece by Betty Rollin examined the popularity of works discussing atheism, including Dawkins’ best-selling book and the off-Broadway play by Julia Sweeney, Letting Go of God. The piece included a quote from Harvard theologian Harvey Cox who described the rising interest in atheism as a natural reaction when “religious people get too arrogant.” Rollin also noted poll data showing that a majority of Americans do not like atheists.
“We got a lot of e-mail responses to that, and almost all of them were positive,” said Arnold Labaton, Religion & Ethics e.p. “The criticism was that it wasn’t long enough or we don’t report on it often enough.”
Web page posted April 30, 2007
Copyright 2007 by Current Publishing Committee
