About the show.

HOLY PICTURES
A light-hearted look at the Bible according to Hollywood
Presented and produced by Gerry McArdle

Programme 1: "Be Careful of Sodomite Patrols."  Saturday 16 July
Programme 2: "Christ at the Cinema."  Saturday 23 July 
Programme 3: "The Alternative Jesus."  Saturday 30 July
Programme 4: "The 'Authentic' Jesus?"  Saturday 6 August

In the 1950s, The Ambassador Cinema, in Dublin, was the preferred venue for premiering some of the biggest blockbuster films on show in Ireland.  All of the other cinemas had continuous performances throughout the afternoon and evening, where you could walk in at any point during the show and watch it as many times as you liked.  The Ambassador, however, when screening a blockbuster, had only two shows daily, the feature film usually had an intermission, and booking was essential.  A lot of these cinematic spectacles were Hollywood treatments of the Old and New Testaments; what you might irreverently call "Holy Pictures."

It was in 1956, at the Ambassador, that producer and presenter Gerry McArdle, then a seven-year-old stripling, saw Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, thus beginning a life-long love affair with biblical epics.  This love affair, however, did not involve a loss of his critical faculties, the biblical epic genre being something of a curate's egg.  Some of these movies played fast and loose with scriptural stories, had risible dialogue and performances that were either wooden or over-the-top.  Although all of them did have a certain je ne sais quoi kind of charm, the anonymous clerihew was apt:

Cecil B. De Mille,
Rather against his will
Was persuaded to keep Moses
Out of the Wars of the Roses.

During the 1970s, when he was earning his living acting in Australia, Gerry worked with the late Frank Thring, an actor who appeared in quite a few Hollywood blockbusters, for example "Ben Hur" and "King of Kings". "Frank was a very flamboyant, larger than life character on the Australian theatre scene, with an acerbic wit.  He was openly gay before it was fashionable, or, indeed, acceptable to be so," recalls Gerry, and then grins wryly. "His performances were always under-stated."

These memories, then, form part of the source from which this new four part radio series springs.   In the company of Irish Times film critic Donald Clarke, Assistant Director of the Irish Film Institute Grainne Humphreys and theological lecturer, ethicist and film correspondent for The Furrow, Barry McMillan, Gerry McArdle invites listeners to enjoy extracts from and light-hearted analyses of the scriptures on celluloid, from the aforementioned Ten Commandments to Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ.  Along the way listen, also, for alternative treatments of religious themes, such as Jesus of Montreal, The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ.