Read the following by Andrew Graystone (full article):
“Next week BBC1 will broadcast a four-part drama retelling the story of The Nativity. It has been written by Tony Jordan, one of the UK’s most gifted TV story-liners. He was responsible for the narrative of Eastenders for most of its 25 years. And he’s brought to The Nativity all the same story-telling skills.
Jordan has portrayed the central characters with intense honesty; two young people caught in an impossible situation, struggling to cope with the arrival of an unexpected baby. Meanwhile there are parallel stories unfolding; three wise men are following what they take to be signs in the sky; farm-hands scratch a living while an uncaring government takes away what little resources they have. All along you feel that these diverse narratives are destined to crash into each other in some extraordinary event. What is different about this story is that at several key points the camera zooms out and we see the earth from space. There is a groaning sound. Tony Jordan is telling us that in this story something cosmic is happening; something of ultimate significance.
Many people in our generation are attracted to the idea that life is a continuing drama. Walt Disney’s “circle of life” reassures that that the human narrative need never end. It means we don’t have to clean up our own mess. If there is a divine story-liner, his job is to keep the narrative permanently open. But a story that is endless is ultimately meaningless.
Christians don’t believe that the human story is a continuing drama. History doesn’t go round in circles like the London Eye. It is linear and purposeful like the London Marathon. The human narrative had a beginning in God, a historical middle in which God intervened definitively in the most spectacular and dramatic way, and an end that God will surely bring about.”
See the trailer:
I look forward to seeing the rest of it on iPlayer when I get back from Egypt (looks like it’s on, but I won’t believe it til we’re in the air!)! (And for a change of pace, try ‘The Accidental Farmer‘… so funny, particularly when you come from a farming background!