**RIDDLED WITH SPOILERS**
I watched this, for the third time since it was first broadcast, on YouTube, and still love it. What a contrast between the lightweight drama ITV is putting out now.
The ending is perfect when you consider what led up to it. It raises some philosophical questions about the nature of God which the viewer *should* be able to handle. It makes Judith, who throughout has been more sceptical and worldly wise than the rather innocent Messiah, the one to whom the solution is finally revealed. But not from God, from her own human mind. And it makes sense, because what greater sacrifice can there be than to not exist and also to have *never* existed. Retrospective existentialism, Madchester style.
It seems to me that some of the critics have no problem with God killing - or allowing to die - his own son but find the idea of his son's suicide distasteful/blasphemous. That makes Judith - a flawed but tough woman who practically orders him to execute his fate - god-like. But if suicide is a sin, what are we to make of Christ's submission to his own killing? And what does the dying ego make of that choice between passive and active sacrifice? I think Baxter, in those last minutes, comes to realise the purity of the latter; that the blame for this death will rest solely with HIM and not (as with Christ) humanity - whose sins no longer need to be atoned for. A world without sin has presumably always been the Christian goal, and Baxter realises the only way he can make that happen is by removing the very concept of sin. An ingenious quick fix against a ticking clock, when you think about it, and nothing like a cop-out. The whole story has worked toward this sublime orchestrated death of the ego.
There's more than a hint at the end that Judith has given birth to Baxter's child and that her husband, the previous faithful guardian, is happily cast in the 'Joseph' role. The story of that child is untold. But, in hindsight, who better to have the third testament revealed to them than the woman who has presumably just become impregnated with God's grandchild?
Marvellous stuff.
I watched this, for the third time since it was first broadcast, on YouTube, and still love it. What a contrast between the lightweight drama ITV is putting out now.
The ending is perfect when you consider what led up to it. It raises some philosophical questions about the nature of God which the viewer *should* be able to handle. It makes Judith, who throughout has been more sceptical and worldly wise than the rather innocent Messiah, the one to whom the solution is finally revealed. But not from God, from her own human mind. And it makes sense, because what greater sacrifice can there be than to not exist and also to have *never* existed. Retrospective existentialism, Madchester style.
It seems to me that some of the critics have no problem with God killing - or allowing to die - his own son but find the idea of his son's suicide distasteful/blasphemous. That makes Judith - a flawed but tough woman who practically orders him to execute his fate - god-like. But if suicide is a sin, what are we to make of Christ's submission to his own killing? And what does the dying ego make of that choice between passive and active sacrifice? I think Baxter, in those last minutes, comes to realise the purity of the latter; that the blame for this death will rest solely with HIM and not (as with Christ) humanity - whose sins no longer need to be atoned for. A world without sin has presumably always been the Christian goal, and Baxter realises the only way he can make that happen is by removing the very concept of sin. An ingenious quick fix against a ticking clock, when you think about it, and nothing like a cop-out. The whole story has worked toward this sublime orchestrated death of the ego.
There's more than a hint at the end that Judith has given birth to Baxter's child and that her husband, the previous faithful guardian, is happily cast in the 'Joseph' role. The story of that child is untold. But, in hindsight, who better to have the third testament revealed to them than the woman who has presumably just become impregnated with God's grandchild?
Marvellous stuff.