Friday, March 21, 2008

The Passion - gets the Gareth McLean treatment

© BBC - THE PASSION on BBC One, starts 16th March, 2008 Pictures show: Jesus (JOSEPH MAWLE) in the Garden of Gethsemane www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone for more info, interviews, pictures and clips.

The Guardian's Gareth McLean reviews this evening's (third) episode of The Passion in today's paper in his inimitable style:

The Passion
9pm, BBC1

While there are no prizes for guessing what occurs in tonight's instalment — and Sunday's final episode is Dallas's Bobby stepping out of the shower at the end of season nine all over again — the familiarity of the story by no means detracts from its power. Even for nonbelievers, Frank Deasy and Michael Offer's vision of the Passion — from Jesus's journey to Gethsemane, the trial before Pilate and the brutal journey to Golgotha — is wrenching stuff.

Pity it also clashes with Torchwood and the last episode of Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach. Time to set the video.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is Good Friday called as such when Jesus was beaten and crucified. Should it not be called Bad Friday.

Anonymous said...

Good Friday is called 'good'as Christians believe something Good came out of Jesus' death- ie he died to save sins

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

It's an interesting question.

Some reckon it's nearly a convenient accident that he call it good in English. To quote one explanation:

I’ve read that the word good used to have a secondary meaning of holy, but I can’t trace that back in my etymological dictionary. There are a number of cases in set phrases where the words God and good got switched around because of their similarity. One case was the phrase God be with you, which today is just good-bye. So perhaps Good Friday was originally God’s Friday. But I think we call it Good Friday because, in pious retrospect, all that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could be.

But it doesn't really matter - the suffering and sacrifice brought good.