I associate Bible stories with boredom.
At primary school, there was nothing worse than being penned inside on a sunny afternoon as the teacher read yet another chapter of Workers For The Kingdom. Even when Bible stories were filmed, involving a bit of action and Hollywood swagger, they were scarcely more enjoyable. My Gran would make us watch all 17,000 episodes of Jesus of Nazareth every Easter but if my sister or I yowled at the crucifixion or, as I got older, perhaps remarked on how damn good-looking the sweaty blue-eyed Robert Powell was, we'd be shushed and told to pay attention. No, Bible stories are not there to be enjoyed.
So I was surprised to find The Ark (BBC1) so funny. Am I offending the righteous here? Perhaps it wasn't supposed to be funny? Well I laughed, especially at how the BBC's budget forced them to dodge the prospect of millions of animals going in two by two (hurrah! hurrah!) There was no great beastly parade. Instead, we saw a few goats skittering around and, as the black clouds swirled over the desert, the silhouette of a grunting, pawing mob appeared on a distant hill, a giraffe's neck usefully poking up into the murk to let us know these weren't just some rough locals coming to hitch a lift.
The cast's accents were also slightly comical. I know there's a long-running trend in TV to have regional accents included, and that's to be welcomed as no-one likes to hear the old BBC Received Pronunciation which sounded like a nasal whine being strangled by a bow-tie. A jumble of accents, as long as they're well-enunciated, is a good thing but when you put casual voices and slapdash tones in a Biblical setting it does nothing but suggest The Life of Brian.
The Ark was being played straight, so to have Monty Python constantly elbowing their way in was disconcerting. But if Bible stories can only be narrated in posh, lofty accents then how can they be made accessible to us all. Perhaps they can't, and that raises the question of whether they should be, because are they not just myths? Do they not merit the same status as a Brothers Grimm tale? Consider how fairy stories are conveyed to us: usually through Americanised Disney Princesses. I can't imagine Snow White speaking in a Geordie accent, or Sleeping Beauty as a Brummie. It would seem comical, just as a working-class, straight-talkin' Northern Noah seems. So perhaps these outlandish tales need precise accents and specific presentation to make them acceptable.
The drama could easily have been edited down from its whopping 90 minutes. Too much time was spent establishing that Noah was a wholesome family man and there were lots of classroom-level debates on faith and intelligent design. By comparison, only a sliver was devoted to the main event, the thing we were all here to see: a terrifying flood and the hideous conditions on the Ark. Instead, we just got passengers clutching one another in the dark as the thunder cracked and the (invisible) animals moaned.
Amidst the comedy were some relevant themes, and it seems The Ark is joining Poldark in using old costume dramas to bounce our current concerns back at us. Noah was horrified at the antics of the city-dwellers - if David Cameron had tagged along with him, he'd have gasped at it as 'Broken Britain' - with sex, drugs and money being people's only concerns, and no-one staying at home to mind the nippers, leaving them to grow into desert 'hoodies'. When Noah climbed up on his soapbox to try and deliver God's message he was jeered and mocked or simply ignored, just as preachers in Buchanan Street are today. The message seemed to be 'nothing has changed', but the solution seemed to be 'build a big boat'. That's not much use.
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