About Movie

I am a big fan of Eastenders and love the character led storylines, and while I think Pastor Lucas has an intriguing and mysterious sickness in the head, I am getting a bit tired of seeing every committed Christian that appears in movies or TV films these days portrayed as a psycho. Certainly it happens in real life, that people just don't get what faith is all about and the will of God becomes a ball of confusion in their heads leading them to do the wrong things. Instead of standing back and letting God take the reins, some people project their own will onto God to justify wrongdoing. But when these ideas are being expressed to mass TV audiences, it is vital to get the balance right.

For those who don't know, Pastor Lucas has now murdered his second victim, Owen, his wife-to-be Denise's ex who found out about Lucas' first murder (which was more of a failure to report a fatal accident than murder) of his own ex-wife. As always with Eastenders, quality scriptwriting comes to the fore, cleverly building up the obsession and the motives that have led to the poor tragic character of Lucas. Particularly skilful was the way tension prior to the wedding ceremony was increased by the unravelling of two story lines which became one: Lucas' spat with Owen and Phil's problems with the loan shark. Phil, desperate to hide his Jaguar from the repo merchant, hands the keys to Lucas and tells him to get it out of the square. The car then becomes the scene of the crime when Owen appears in the back seat to torment Lucas, and ends up strangled in the boot (or trunk). Comedy is used to good effect to highlight the tragedy, both in the characters of Denise's sister and brother-in-law, who cannot keep their hands off the gin, each other or anyone else they happen to fancy, and in the presence of the Jaguar at the wedding, with murdered Owen's mobile phone going off periodically in the boot as his mother frantically tries to contact him to no avail.

Great story-telling brilliantly produced, so what's my objection? Perhaps there was a time in the past when ethnic viewers might have made the same criticism I am making whenever a member of their race was portrayed as a criminal without reservation. Now it seems it is Christians or religious people of any kind who get the scapegoat treatment. Just as in the past it became necessary for filmmakers to introduce balance whenever ethnic characters were involved, so it is important that whenever we have psycho Christians as crime protagonists, we should also have just as many in the show doing what they normally do, good, selfless, charitable work.