“MY AIM is undermining Christian faith.” What exactly are the fumes that rise from the Stygian waters of the Isis to poison such arch-enemies of our religion as the proud source of this quotation, who is the subject of Imagine. . . Philip Pullman (BBC1, Monday of last week)?
It was a marvellous and revealing film. Pullman is a craftsman, serious about the trade of writing: he allows his characters and turns of the story to have independent life.
His imagination is extraordinary: nothing less than the creation of a parallel universe, connected with that familiar to us yet richly strange. It is not just a vehicle for storytelling: it has a fierce moral, philosophical, and anti-theological purpose. And this is the point at which we saw his humane sophistication fall to bits.
He hates what he conceives to be our Christian deity: “God is completely unpleasant.” And this despite a greatly-loved priest-grandfather, and being, by his admission, soaked in the cadences of the Authorised Version, Prayer Book, and classical hymnody.
His hatred of God is curiously, for so sophisticated and poetic a writer, that of the arrogant first-year undergraduate encountering evolution and science for the first time, and deciding that a choice has to be made between Jesus or Darwin. Even in Oxford there must be a host of people capable of explaining how he is going wrong: we heard for a brief moment the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Lord Williams, who has engaged over the years in precisely this task.
Of course, Pullman’s vision, soaked in Milton and Blake, is essentially religious — even (despite what he thinks) Christian. The programme was achingly beautiful, lingering on the mists that soften the dreaming spires. The author might see in them the source of his mysterious Dust; as far as faith is concerned, they appear to be, for him at least, fog.
BBC/© 2018 Fox and its related entitiesEdgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace
Creative genius cut short in its prime is lovingly celebrated in The Assassination of Gianni Versace (BBC2, Wednesdays). Its major twin subject poles — haute couture and the Miami gay scene — are not exactly my central interests, but this is compelling. It draws us in, engaging simultaneously our interest and repulsion. Andrew Cunanan, the assassin, is an appalling monster: charming, fascinating, amoral, ruthless, psychotic. The film is drenched in a nostalgic, golden light. Beware! It denotes darkness visible.
The London Underground must regret the screening of Below the Surface, BBC4’s latest Scandi-noir Saturday-evening crime-thriller. A Copenhagen metro train is hijacked by ruthless criminals, and the passengers incarcerated in a subterranean cage until the huge ransom is paid. But there are many complexities already emerging: it seems that the motive might be revenge rather than money.
As violence mounts, the hostages start to fall to pieces — and our resolve stiffens never to visit North-Western Europe; perhaps, even, to avoid, as far as possible, the Central Line.