The Stage

BBC plans big budget Jesus drama

Published Wednesday 26 April 2006 at 17:10 by Liz Thomas

The Passion, the story of the life and death of Jesus, is to be retold in a new big budget production by the BBC, which it hopes will be broadcast over Easter in 2008.

Epic dramas telling Christ’s story have proved popular with both Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ and seventies television juggernaut Jesus of Nazareth, starring Robert Powell, Laurence Olivier and Ian McShane, both big hits.

BBC1 controller Peter Fincham said: “Jesus of Nazareth was a big story that was big box office, it was the biggest thing on TV that year and it was about religion. It is a good example of the sort of thing the BBC should be doing because we can do it and no one else will.”

Speaking at a conference for media lobby group Voice of the Listener and Viewer, Fincham revealed that the popularity of BBC1’s Bleak House had highlighted the fact that retelling classic stories in innovative ways, appealed to viewers.

The Passion project is still in the early stages of development and is not guaranteed to make it on screens, if it does it will be no earlier than 2008.

Fincham also said that the BBC was making a sports reality show featuring celebrities attempting to show jump. The working title is Only Fools on Horses.