The Bible - History Channel Series

The Bible - History Channel Series

Debuting to an audience of 14 million, and maintaining an average of 10 million viewers in its remaining weeks, the History Channel's mini-series The Bible was an unequivocal ratings, if not critical, success. Megachurch leaders like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen lauded the message while some critics hammered the series for poor acting and storytelling. But no one should have been surprised that millions of people would watch. As Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ taught us, Christians will support any on-screen endeavor that remains mostly faithful to the biblical source material and doesn't intentionally insult its religious audience.

But the producers wanted to capture more than just the faithful among their viewers, so they ensured the production values exceeded the usual religious fare. This is certainly where The Bible shone. The visuals on display in just the first two hours included impressive recreations of Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom, and the parting of the Red Sea. The special effects team managed solid renderings of all three—quite a feat for a single episode of television. Though not on par with spectacle-packed blockbusters like Transformers or The Avengers, the effects exceeded the typically low expectations that follow the description "TV movie about the Bible."

Perhaps the most inspiring choice on the production side was commissioning Hans Zimmer to produce the music. Scoring animated classics like The Lion King, as well as mega franchises such as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Dark Knight, Zimmer has defined movie music for this generation in the way that composer John Williams (Star Wars, Jaws) defined it for the previous generation. His music for The Bible followed familiar lines, adding cinematic quality that validated the series' self-description of "epic."

Aside from the production values, though, the series faltered in important ways. The unavoidable problem of turning the entire Bible into a movie is that the narrative is far too long for even a 10-hour series. Naturally, the show's writers skipped over material. And they skipped a lot: Jacob, Joseph, all of the Judges except Samson, Solomon, and most of the Prophets, just to recount the Old Testament. Despite such gaps, the summarized version of the Old Testament helped to highlight the classic Christian emphasis on the history of redemption, where the law and prophets point to Christ.