Christianity: A History

About a year ago, both the head of C4 and I talked about ways of making the channel’s religious output feel special and stand out from the norm. The best way forward, I felt, was to bunch things together and make big statement projects, creating “must watch” moments; the kind of projects you just don’t see anywhere else. The first project in this new era featured both The Qur’an and The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World. Broadcast during one week in July 2008, these programmes really stood out and felt extremely relevant.

At the same time, I started to plan the next big project. A few production companies tried to sell a number of ideas but one idea stood out for me – Pioneer Productions wanted to tell the history of Christianity from an alternative perspective, and with particular relevance to Britain. It was an intriguing idea and felt like an exact fit to what I was looking for.

This project has been a mammoth undertaking for the producers – eight programmes, eight different presenters, multiple locations and continents, numerous directors, eight individual programme consultants, various lawyers, agents… and of course they had to deal with me! The end result of all this hard work is a series I am very proud of. Christianity: A History demonstrates just how seriously we take the subject of religion at Channel 4, and I believe it is exactly the sort of grown up and inquisitive programming our audience both asks for and deserves.

As with all religions, the history of Christianity is not a simple one. It contains dark moments, compromises and great achievements, and features life changing heroes and villains. I feel that now is the right time for Channel 4 to present these stories in a way that will inform our audience about how this faith has shaped our world, and more specifically, our nation. I’m not making such a grand statement for the sake of it, but rather to demonstrate an acceptance that we cannot understand our world today without realising how it was shaped.

Two examples of Christianity’s impact on the modern world are the Reformation and the Crusades. Without the Reformation we may not have become a Protestant nation with many of the characteristics, language and structures we take for granted today. And the Crusades? One of our presenters, Rageh Omar, argues in his film that we’ve forgotten its importance in the west, but that in the Muslim world, the brutality of the Crusades still resonates in the hearts of many Muslims and in the rhetoric of Al Qaeda.

So, Christianity: A History is not just history – it’s a lesson about today and an attempt to shed light on the history of a faith that continues to shape the destiny of all of us in some way or other. I hope it does that and that enough viewers get something from it. I don’t expect everyone to love it, but I expect it to make most viewers think, which can’t be a bad thing can it?

Update – Feb 24: For more on this, please take a look at Aaqil Ahmed’s video response your comments.

There have been lots of programmes about Muslims in the past few years – some have been positive but many have not. Post 9/11 and then 7/7 it was inevitable that film makers, writers and journalists would want to cover issues around Islam, terrorism, suicide bombing and the spreading of hate.I myself am the commissioner behind The Cult of the Suicide Bomber and Jihad – important programmes that explored what motivates people to commit acts of terror and war, supposedly in the name of their religion.

About a year or two ago however, I realised that though these films were important, we had lost a sense of balance. We weren’t making enough films about the belief system of conventional Islam. The extreme fringe of any faith is not the most representative voice and I felt it was important that we didn’t continually focus upon it.

Whilst in Jerusalem last year I was discussing the possibility of filming at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third most holy site in Islam. I was offered the chance to live stream the mosque’s Friday prayers and, whilst this wouldn’t work for the Channel 4 audience, this was the spark that lead to The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World.

Initially I thought of dedicating a whole day to follow the five prayers across the world. Despite this idea being a logistical and scheduling nightmare, the head of Channel 4, Julian Bellamy, was intrigued straight away. He immediately saw the potential and encouraged find a format that would work. Eventually we hit on the “Seven Wonders” concept – selecting seven iconic buildings that were not only spectacular, but that helped us to illustrate just how diverse Islam is – an important aspect of the series.

The director, Faris Kermani, dedicated nine months of his life to this project. Dealing with the Saudi’s to get into Mecca has aged him, but I’m glad he persevered. The Saudi authorities were very helpful as were the Waqf, the religious body who run the Islamic sites in Jerusalem. It’s a testimony to how Channel 4’s religious output is respected in these countries that we managed to pull off what would have been virtually impossible for other broadcasters to do.

This week has also seen the broadcast of The Qu’ran – a two-hour film by award winning film maker Antony Thomas. Antony came to me with this unique project well over a year ago – it excited both me and the channel and was commissioned within days. Running The Qu’ran and The Seven Wonders together has allowed us to maximise their impact in the schedule and send out a strong message that we are focussing on belief, something that has not been done before.

If Antony was not in love with Islam before he made this film, then I believe that he is now. He travelled the whole Muslim world talking to scholars, religious leaders and ordinary Muslims to deliver what I feel is a truly inspirational and sensational film. I am more than proud to be associated with it and find it truly humbling that a film commissioned by me is the first in Britain, and probably the western world, to tackle the subject of the Qur’an.

Both The Qur’an and The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World have been emotional roller coasters but they each illustrate why Channel 4 is such an important part of the landscape of British life. No other broadcaster would have made these films, put them in prime time and, most importantly of all, been proud of it. Due to the very nature of television, I don’t expect everyone to be happy with either project, but I believe they are part of a new understanding of Islam in the west and I’m glad to have contributed to this in some small way.

My career at the channel has run alongside the entire production period of this project. Normally, a prime time documentary would take around three to six months to make – this film took over five years. Why it took so long is another story, and could be a film in itself (a production company went bust, producers changed, the film length increased, our subject faced extradition to Ireland…) – now though, I’m glad to say that Reverend Death has been broadcast and, more importantly, I’m proud to have been involved with it.

Reverend Death was a legal and moral minefield but, for me, that’s what makes the film so special. Jon Ronson’s style of filmmaking and interviewing is unique, and with a subject matter that would normally receive a harder current affairs approach, it was a challenge to deliver the final product. Over the five years, Jon and I worked very closely with C4 lawyer Heather Jackson and there were times when her word was probably more important than mine. We had numerous debates about the film’s structure and content, and not all of us agreed on various points. But that’s the real beauty of programme making – despite what some people say, it’s not about auteurism, it’s about team work.

Our subject, George Exoo is a very polarising character. You either agree with what he’s doing or you don’t – there is no middle ground. That’s exactly what I love about films; one person’s interpretation can be completely at odds with the next person’s. At the beginning of this filmmaking process, Jon was definitely more sympathetic than I was, but I think this tension enabled the film to delve deeper into what was going on. I think the film does this really well.

In his own lovable style, Jon delivered a film that follows a man who feels he has a calling to assist those that want to die – a subject matter that only Jon could have come up with. Jon uncovered the source of George’s motivations and found out who and what had influenced him. He met someone who wanted to “exit”, uncovered a shady underground euthanasia movement, and explored the thoughts and opinions of the mainstream. He fully explored everything around the film’s central character and managed to do this over a long period of time, often at long distance – something not to be sniffed at.

It would have been easier to have made a superficial film about “a wacky American who helps people die”, and maybe that’s what this film could have become had it been made in the conventional time period. The bravery on Channel 4’s part was to back Jon beyond this, to not pressure him (too much at least!) to deliver on time and to give him the freedom to explore why Exoo does what he does. Ninety-minutes may seem like a long duration for a documentary, but in order to do this subject justice it was the right thing to do.

Someone asked me after watching Reverend Death if I felt that we should have analysed George’s past and mindset in more depth. My reaction was to say that that’s a whole different film… A follow-up anyone?