Plenty to ‘like’ as Facebook turns serial thriller

The boundary bet-ween traditional and social media is still pretty clear, but there are some interesting things going on in the blurred border area.

Facebook Live, for example, merges TV and social media very effectively. It gathers video content that people have posted on Facebook and lets you watch them in one place.

Last week I had a look around to see what this platform has to offer. While plenty of performers (including gospel singers and liturgical composers) post videos, and there are Masses and other services, some of the most interesting shows are the Facebook Live Originals.

I checked out the drama series Sacred Lies – the half-hour episodes are unusual for a crime drama, but the production values are on a par with mainstream TV. This one looks promising – a young girl escapes from a cult and an FBI psychologist tries to piece together what happened.

Too often religion is portrayed in drama as weird, but so far it’s a little more nuanced here. The FBI guy says he investigates “religious crimes” – he wants to find out “why people hurt each other in the name of God, and try to stop it from happening”.

The young girl is described as “a crazy cult person”, she has no hands, can be violent, says she attacked a man because she thought he was God and wanted to kill God. She firmly denies she’s a Christian, not surprisingly. As a regular cop puts it, referring to the cult leader: “What kind of nuts follow a prophet named Kevin?”

It is a dark show and I don’t know what direction it will take, but I’ll find out.

Positive  work

Another Facebook original, Returning the Favour is a documentary series highlighting people who do positive work in society and in one recent episode, ‘The Woman Who Changed the Foster Care System’, presenter Mike Rowe visited Ronda Paulson in Elizabethton, Tennessee, a woman who works tirelessly with children to improve their experience of being taken into foster care.

She works to reduce the trauma for these often neglected children by providing them with a comfortable, homely environment while they await being placed in a foster home – otherwise they’d be waiting hours or days in the offices of the Department of Child Services.

She has set up several of these half-way houses with her group Isaiah 117 – inspired by the Scripture verse Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good, search for justice…be just to the orphan.”

Clearly she is a woman of faith with a vocation – she felt God saying “these are my children, what are you gonna do?” The show was good-humoured and inspiring, enhanced by Rowe’s unfussy, empathic and cheerful approach. It’s another one I’ll be following up.

Back on regular TV, the film Hope – Our Lady of Knock (EWTN, Friday) marked the anniversary of the apparitions of 1879. Directed by Campbell Miller it was a historical docudrama and regular readers know I’m not a fan of the genre, preferring either documentary or drama, but this was quite acceptable.

I liked the scenes where we saw the witnesses giving evidence and trying to be as accurate as they could be. A scene where a tenant farmer saw his potatoes turning to mush in the Famine was effective, and the subsequent eviction scene was suitably unsettling, but I wasn’t a fan of the uninspiring background music that seemed rather randomly added – it was especially irritating during interviews.

The interviews were quite effective and interesting – speakers included Archbishop Eamon Martin, the Rector of Knock Fr Richard Gibbons, as well as staff members of the shrine and museum at Knock, including the youth ministry.

I liked the way the historical context was set, with special emphasis on the Famine, though at times I felt a little too much time was spent on that.

I found the latter sequences about the investigations and miracles particularly engaging, as was the coverage of Knock Shrine today (or at least pre-Covid-19) with its emphasis on Confession – described as “the engine room” of the shrine, where people often leave in tears having unburdened themselves and received absolution. This sequence has huge catechetical application, as has the theological analysis of the apparitions.

It’s great to see these EWTN original movies. In times of poor leadership (#golfgate!) it’s good to see lives of modern saints and holy people back in the limelight.