Continuing the hot trend of prostrating yourself before an omniscient being who judges all your mortal sins, NBC has ordered a miniseries based on the Ten Commandments, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series from Damages co-creator Todd A. Kessler will draw inspiration not only from God’s to-do list, but also Kryzstof Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Like that 1989 series, each of the 10 one-hour episodes will be a modern story illustrating one of the rules for moral living, with the one about keeping the Sabbath day holy being the most boring.
Suggesting the most important commandments are, as always, the ones about coveting and stealing, NBC’s announcement comes amid an explosion of several similarly themed projects across many other networks—including WGN’s own Ten Commandments miniseries, which will follow the exact same format and turn its episodes over to directors like Wes Craven, Gus Van Sant, and Michael Cera. There’s also two different shows on the Seven Deadly Sins from both David Mamet and Morgan Spurlock; Fox’s Nazareth series; Lifetime’s series about minor biblical figure Dinah and one about Jesus’ early years; the History Channel’s own “lost Jesus” show; CBS’s The Dovekeepers, about the Siege of Masada; and Wolfgang Petersen’s show about King David. Confirming that we begin by coveting what we see every day, there’s even NBC’s own A.D., the sequel to the History Channel miniseries that started all of this, after a couple millennia of building buzz.
Should the project move forward, it’s believed that NBC will attempt to get its Ten Commandments on the air before viewers move on to some other fad, like cowboys.