God is getting plenty of coverage on TV these days…

The producers of Eastenders are coming under fire for a storyline where hellfire preacherman Lucas Johnson turns out to be a killer, although critics can’t really decide whether the BBC is being racist (since Lucas is one of the only black people in the show) or faith-ist (since he is one of the only ‘Christian’ characters on the show)…

On a milder note, I’ve been catching up with Rev, the new comedy about a struggling inner-city C of E vicar.  Some of it rings very true (interesting to see that a bunch of real-life ‘Revs’ are listed in the credits as consultants) and it deals with a lot of hot-button issues for the church (faith schools, living in a multi-cultural society, falling numbers…)  At the same time the programme makes me quite uncomfortable; it seems to have a view of church as a diverting but slightly oddball curiosity, a series of slightly half-hearted rituals centred around a crumbling building, suffused with a sense of quiet despair and failure.  (Back to the old question – What Is Church…?)  The programme is certainly worth a watch; it’s very funny, it’s rude but not stupid, and it does seem to have been made with some genuine care and affection.

You can catch up with it on iPlayer here: http://beta.bbc.co.uk/i/sz1t0/

But the absolute far-and-away best thing on TV at the moment (now that Doctor Who has finished of course) is Mary Queen of Shops, which alas has just finished its current run on Monday nights (although you can catch up with any of the episodes until Sunday night on iPlayer – and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should spend your weekend doing just that).

On the surface the programme is one of the many makeover shows where your house/hair/kitchen/wardrobe/whatever is shown in all its dilapidated squalor at the start of the programme before being transformed into a thing of splendour, to gasps of amazement and (usually) tears.  In this case it’s local businesses that get the makeover treatment; Mary Portas arrives in to a scruffy local shop on its last legs, and within a month has the challenge of turning it around into a cutting-edge, successful business.

But something makes this show really special.  Mary arrives with not just bucketloads of good advice and creative ideas, but with a passion to see real, lasting change – not just in the businesses but in the people who run them.  She inspires people to be the best they can be, challenges them out of their comfort zones, reconnects them with the fire and drive that got them into business in the first place.  She brings some honesty and tough love into situations where failing shop-owners have been denying the inevitable.  She speaks the truth in love – even her harshest criticisms are given with a real sense that she is on your side, rooting for you, fighting your corner.

Basically, she is in the business of transformation, and I find it difficult to believe that the Holy Spirit isn’t at work somewhere in what she does.  She brings hope in place of despair, truth in place of denial, imagination and creativity in place of dead routine.  I don’t get emotional at TV very often, but I don’t mind admitting that I was fighting back tears (big manly tears of course) at the end of the episode ‘Clealls’, as Mary left the couple running their shop in Devon with their marriage rescued, their shop saved, their loneliness and isolation replaced with a sense of being part of the community.

So in a way, maybe Mary answers part of the question – What is church?  It’s got to be a place where transformation happens.  What challenges me, is that a TV programme about business makeovers presents a much more vivid, moving picture of what that transformation looks like than a TV programme about a vicar…

If you want to catch up with it on iPlayer, hurry! It’s only online until Sunday 18th.  The episode I mentioned, Clealls, is here: http://beta.bbc.co.uk/i/stcqb/

or you can get a taster here:

Or another great one, Under The Moon, is here: http://beta.bbc.co.uk/i/syzr0/

or here’s the taster:

Hey they’re all good!  Get iPlayering now!