BBC television is airing a new mini-series version of the Passion, starting on Palm Sunday.
The BBC’s website for the series is here.
(It would be great if BBC America were also showing it, but in the past, they’ve not aired series or programs simultaneously with the home network – like that Monastery program from a couple of years ago. Too bad.)
There’s a video up with comments from those involved in the production. I’d look forward to watching it (if I could), even though those involved take predictable pains to assure any potential viewers that, of course, the series is about anything you want it to be. Which is fine, and I can understand the reasons for making that point. One thing struck me, though. When I read or, in this case, listen to secular appreciations of the “Jesus story,” one theme that’s hardly ever mentioned these days – and in the comments for The Passion  – is the theme of the unjust execution of an innocent man.
I wonder why that is. I hasten to add, I don’t wonder that in a cloud of snarkiness. I really do wonder.
I also think that the assertions that the story of Jesus’ execution have an intrisic appeal apart from any Christian claims about him have their limit. There have been millions of individuals executed – many of them (yes) unjustly – through history.
Why the continued “interest” in this one? Can it really be so easily separated from the big picture and what followed?
Anyway, it looks good. For more on this and other related works, keep up with the Bible Film Blog – a very good blog out of England somewhere.  Also keep your eye on Biblical scholar Mark Goodacre’s New Testament Gateway blog – he provided a background essay that’s on the BBC’s site.
And here – this is really interesting, via Peter Chattaway:
(even though the Variety writer he quotes tells us that the movie really isn’t very good)

So, do you think there’s any chance Mel Gibson’s film, which was based in part on the visions of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, inspired this other new movie? It’s based on a novel that came out two years ago, and for all I know the novel may have been in the works when Gibson was still making his film, but certainly the success of Gibson’s film must have made the subject matter more appealing to whoever ended up financing this movie.
At any rate, here’s what Eddie Cockrell of Variety has to say about it:

A double-edged 1970s vibe permeates “The Pledge,” a dramatization of a real-life 1818 rural encounter between a stigmatic nun and the devout writer sent to document her beliefs in a book that eventually became the inspiration for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” That footnote may gain the pic fest invites, with smallscreen sales and faith-driven ancillary to follow.
“Reformed libertines are usually boring,” someone observes of philistine-turned-devout-Catholic Clemens Brentano (Misel Maticevic). Poet has been dispatched to westernmost Germany to transcribe ecstatic visions of Christ’s life by Anna Katharina Emmerich, who refers to him as “Pilgrim.” Their encounter proves tempestuous. Stilted delivery style may have been deliberate on the part of helmer Dominik Graf, but the strategy wears thin over time. Tech package is more successfully evocative of 1970s stylistic flourishes, from lenser Michael Wiesweg’s slow zooms to the weird electronic score by Sven Rossenbach and Florian van Volxem, half of experimental band “Victory of the Better Man.” Pic was shot entirely in the North Rhine-Westphalia region. (Berlin fest documentation lists the title as “The Vow,” though “The Pledge” is what appears on the print).