ShareThisNot many TV shows inspire this question of the program's creator: "Is the God in 'Kings' the God of the Holy Bible? And do the citizens of Gilboa read the same Bible we read?"
But that's exactly the kind of questions NBC's ambitious retelling of the biblical story of David inspires. "Kings," premiering with a two-hour episode Sunday at 8 p.m. EDT, presents a familiar but not entirely recognizable modern society in the country of Gilboa, ruled by a monarchy.
"A very simple way to think of it is that the show takes place today in a country that you haven't heard of, but any of the things available to us are available in the world that the show takes place in," said executive producer Erwin Stoff at an NBC news conference last summer in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The story is set in motion after David Shepherd (Chris Egan), a soldier in Gilboa's battle with neighboring country Gath, rescues the son of King Silas Benjamin (Ian McShane). Once Silas hails David as a hero, plots are set in motion and viewers begin to get a sense of the religious culture in "Kings," which even plays a role in the butterfly design on the country's flag.
"Part of the fun of the show is taking certain elements of the original story and finding a way to interpolate it, to re-imagine it," said series creator Michael Green in a teleconference last month. For instance, the tank David faces off against on the battlefield is called a Goliath. "I like to look at the first season as David coming into a new world."
McShane said his character has been in power too long.
"Anybody that does anything for too long, eventually it overtakes them," he said of King Silas. "And he sees in David a rival, maybe a protege, both of which are conflicting to him because nobody wants to give up the reins of what he's got."
Green acknowledged he's drawn to stories of a hero's journey -- he previously worked on "Heroes," "Everwood," "Jack and Bobby" and "Smallville"-- but said that despite its biblical origins, "Kings" is not a religious show in the traditional sense.
"I think when people ask if this is a religious show, they're thinking more like the Hallmark movies," Green said. "The definition of a religious show is a show that's designed to inspire religious feeling, whereas this is not a show that's designed to do that."
He compared "Kings" with "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which he said is a movie "that is very much about religious (things), but it's not a religious film; it just takes as its tropes and as its subject things that are important in religion."
As for that initial question about the God and Bible of "Kings," Green dodged.
"I don't think I can answer specifically what Bible they're reading or what religion they're worshipping. There are different denominations, but we don't really get into them quite yet," he said. "That's a harder question to answer without spoiling things."
Director Francis Lawrence (2007's "I Am Legend") noted that viewers will "feel the hand of something sort of maneuvering things, that there is a hand helping David along at times, helping other people along at times," but he was also cagey.
"It is not specifically a Christian God necessarily," Lawrence said.
Odds are, the show's writers are picking and choosing from many different world religions in crafting stories.
"It's a show where religion is as much a subject as politics is," Green said. "We drew from a lot of different sources, and it just let the story take us wherever it was going to take us."
Where "Kings" takes viewers is to the king's court, which looks more like a futuristic senate-hearing chamber, and corporate boardrooms, which stand in for the backrooms of yore.
"We modeled our false government a lot on corporate structure so we looked into not just U.S. politics but business politics and the idea of takeovers and oligarchies and companies that have as much influence on governance as actual governments do," Green said.
Much of the action is set in the nation's capital of Shiloh, a gleaming new city that bears a resemblance to New York.
"We took the Manhattan skyline and carefully painted out certain landmarks and created our own new landmarks," Green said. "So the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building are replaced by the Unity Tower and the CrossGen Building. ... We took the edifice of the New York Public Library, but then had a gleaming spire of a new building come out from it."
Green said the first season will slowly unveil the map of the country and world surrounding Gilboa, and there will be some flashbacks that show how Gilboa came to be engaged in war.
"Kings" will find itself engaged in a battle of its own: for survival.
NBC originally slotted the show for 10 p.m. Thursday after "ER" ends, but more recently gave that slot to the upcoming police drama "Southland." Now the highbrow "Kings" is paired with lowbrow "Celebrity Apprentice" on Sunday nights. (To make matters worse, NBC failed to promote "Kings" during the Super Bowl telecast.)
Green said he thinks 8 p.m. Sunday will be better for the series.
"Sundays are a night when people get together and watch their favorite shows and get on the couch with the family and the popcorn and make it an event," he said. "And that's what we're really hoping this show is."
(Contact TV editor Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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