Seeing as the Catholic Church takes it upon itself to act as the hand of God, it’s somehow fitting to see that hand placed on the shoulder of His people by Kyle Chandler, as he delivers the motivational halftime sermon to a sinful world that really needs to get its act together. Chandler has signed on to star in Showtime’s Ridley Scott-directed series The Vatican, a role that should satisfy those who have watched him deliver stern talking-tos in recent films such as Argo and Zero Dark Thirty and wished that the Friday Night Lights star would get back to expressing heartfelt disappointment on a weekly basis, preferably steeping that shame in old-fashioned Catholic guilt.
He’ll do just that as Cardinal Thomas Duffy, the progressive-minded Archbishop of New York who proves polarizing among other church leaders like Watchmen star Matthew Goode’s Papal Secretary Bernd Koch, a close confidant to the Pope himself, and A Good Day To Die Hard’s Sebastian Koch, the Vatican’s sinister Secretary of State. And if anything can clean up the Vatican’s shadowy history of sex scandals and cover-ups, it’s Kyle Chandler and a single “Listen up, gentlemen…” speech.