"I am salvation, and I'm taking you forward - all of you. A brand new gospel for the entire human race, coming soon. Stay tuned." - Christopher Eccleston as Stephen Baxter
The Second Coming DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Stephen Baxter (Christopher Eccleston) leads a pretty sedate life. A shy, unassuming bloke too scared to even buy a woman a drink, the Manchester native spends his days working in a video shop. Each day is like the next - boring - until the night he gathers with old friends Peter Gupta (Ahsen Bhatti), Dave and Jane Morris (William Travis and Jazmine Franks), and Judith Roach (Bob & Rose's Lesley Sharp) to celebrate Judith's divorce. Stephen and Judith have always been attracted to one another, but they never acted upon it. After receiving a drunken kiss from Judith, Stephen has an epiphany. Literally. He drops out of sight, and when he reappears forty days later hundreds of miles away, he makes a startling claim - he is the son of God.
Needless to say, Stephen is immediately locked away in a hospital by disbelieving officials. People begin to believe him when he escapes and performs his first miracle, turning nighttime into day in Maine Road Stadium before thousands of horrified onlookers. Soon he is proclaiming on international television that "Heaven is empty and Hell is bursting at the seams" and that humanity's only hope is to produce, in the next five days, a third testament to the Bible.
Further miracles convince Stephen's friends to help his cause, although Judith has a hard time believing, even after encounters with a series of seemingly demonic people with evil glowing eyes. As the deadline approaches, it becomes apparent that the third testament will not turn up. When a videotape of Stephen saying that failure to produce the testament will result in "the end" is leaked to the press, global pandemonium ensues.
The Second Coming may have a difficult time finding an audience. Secular viewers may be turned off by the entire concept, believing that it is some sort of Left Behind-esque screed. True believers will take one look at the phrase "from the creator of Queer as Folk" on the packaging and stage a DVD burning. In actuality, though, the miniseries is a thought provoking meditation on good and evil. In many ways, it is an Oh, God! for the twenty-first century, only with less whimsical humor and a bit of suspense thriller thrown in.
In addition to creating Queer as Folk, writer Russell T. Davies also wrote Bob & Rose, a dramedy about an unlikely romance between a gay man and a woman. Davies is a terrific writer who can take high concepts like these and ground them with realistic characters and dialogue. This is true of The Second Coming, but ultimately the miniseries falls short, possibly due to time constraints. With so much plot to dispense of in such a concentrated period of time, the characters do not always feel totally sketched out. The story's surprise resolution feels too much like a surprise - rather than growing organically from what has come before, it seems to spring out of nowhere, dampening the audience's sense of discovery.
Even so, there is much to recommend in The Second Coming. The series is extraordinarily effective at portraying the hysteria that results from Stephen's revelations. Davies' conceit that evil is propagated by ordinary humans who have been warped by despair is also deeply chilling. It is to the writer's credit that even the unsatisfactory ending is incredibly thought-provoking.
The two episodes that make up the entire miniseries are contained on a single disc. Viewers can choose to play the entire miniseries or can watch the episodes individually. The episodes are also subdivided into chapters.
