Last evening, a series premiered on HBO called “The Steeple Chase.” It was drawn from memoirs that have surpassed in sales Vegan Cat Cuisine and Lola Bimbo’s Yoga Manual. The first episode demonstrated how TV adopts a religious work and in the process obliterates the original. It also showed the winds of change blowing through rectory and convent alike. The air currents gusted so strongly that in a single hour, decades of piety and practice were swept away. It was a dubious joy to scan the debris and locate the venerable items that escaped the turbulence. But I’m getting ahead of myself. “The Steeple Chase” wants reviewing, not this writer’s pet peeves.
The narrative lines are simple. The first episode recounts the stages of one man’s ascent from conversion to the cardinalate with a crack at the papacy, and the sister who supports it. Nigel and Nevilla are twin sides of the ecclesiastical coin, innocence and experience back to back. We expect the first in the convent, the second in the world. It was last night’s genius to reverse the order. Mother Nevilla might better be called Lucretia for she moves with the stealth of a Borgia. She’s the cloisters version of the social climber, her brother’s titles the rungs of her ladder.
Last night’s installment was a study in character. Nigel Swain is a clerical dreamboat. Tall, ascetic, dark and handsome, he cuts the perfect figure saying Mass at dawn or hearing confessions at dusk. His singing is soothing, his praying mellifluous, his piety impregnable. The answers he gives to vexing problems are unbudgeable, bolstered by the inflexible compassion of Canon Law. Father Swain is a career priest, immensely charming and pleasingly vapid. His saving grace is his restlessness. His past explains why. A convert at twelve, he was locked in a seminary at seventeen when boys at his age boogied in basements and experimented in closets. He’s hungry for life. The ecclesiastical shoreline feels too safe, so he ventures into the depths. Though waves threaten to overwhelm, the open sea is preferable to shallow wading. He takes the plunge and becomes head waiter at the Ritz. His tuxedo hides his secret well. Amid popping corks and braising beef, spooning caviar and igniting crepes, male and female admirers slip him notes which he keeps for his file of inscribed napkins. He grows in wisdom and age till grace wrestles him to his knees, and he climbs to the top of the clerical heap.
Less accessible than Nigel, his sister Nevilla is as strong a personality. We see her in choir singing Psalms or tending her rows of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. An expert in pesticides, she’s known for her potions. Holistic masters from L.A. and Tibet regularly visit her along with tenement owners in search of roach spray. We witness Nevilla’s iron will when her fasting from chocolate mousse is offered to Providence on behalf of her brother — a remarkable feat when she’s drawn to the dessert like a wasp to honey. We credit her abstinence and the Holy Ghost for Nigel’s return to the priesthood. We’re not surprised, for Nevilla has foreseen it all. In an earlier scene she exhorts him:
“You’re exemplary, Nigel. Teenage girls pack your novenas. Your confessional fills with widows in mink and males in suede, all searching for divine intimacy. Your sermons are witty and geared to the headlines so no one gets bored. You’re on the right side of every issue, from baby seals to pro-life for whales. You jam Communion breakfasts with women drawn to your aftershave. You have waiting a brilliant career. You’re the favorite of Bishop Troll. I hear through these cloistral bars and grille you’ll be a monsignor. That’s a stone’s throw from a bishopric.”
Nevilla’s words prove prescient. The years pass and the piping on Reverend Swain’s cassock goes from black to purple and finally to red. At the conclave three cardinals favor his papal election. They see in an American pope more cash to clean up the Sistine Chapel. The last scene is a cliff-hanger. Whom will the Holy Ghost choose? Nigel’s allies press for his election, convinced grace builds on nature. But what of the wily Cardinal Falderallo? Will his caucusing upset the fifth ballot? As intimates who shared the same seminary dorm, each knows the other’s Achilles’ heel. Will the conclave descend to dirty politics?
We thank HBO and its perfume sponsor, “Succubus,” for dramatizing spiritual issues. We are grateful, too, during the first episode that breaks were kept to a minimum. The sole commercial was a model of restraint with cloister and cross followed by rumpled sheets and a husky female voice saying: “In the heart of a woman, passion seethes. Now a perfume for women who consume men while they sleep: “Succubus” mingling narcissus and wolfsbane with the base note of musk. The scent sharpens appetite. In blood-red crystal, the flacon is shaped like a Bartlett pear. “Succubus:” for the female insatiably devilish, for the devil voraciously female.” This is what TV is about: linking the unexpected. The telecast has been a felicitous mix of power and piety, sex and asceticism.
Praise must go to the writer, Zebulon Dix, whose narrative skill recasts the tale of Reverend Swain from the Catholic viewpoint. His choice for male lead is pure genius. Alfonso Fonzi’s pectorals and profile are perfect. Selina Seluki is sultry as Mother Nevilla. When she turns full frontal, the religious habit cannot hide her miraculous measurements. In all respects she’s a rounded character. Her voice alone is worth the price of cable. No one has ever mentioned chocolate mousse with such breathy intensity. In L.A. parlance, she’s the hottest nun in the abbey. The suave Alastair Guinness closes the episode with elegant innuendo and we are won over. If this urbane man recommends “The Steeple Chase,” who are we to cite good taste in protest? Each week our TVs will be tuned: same time, same channel.
This review suggests that TV religion has a future. “The Steeple Chase” proves it. Millions have been spent on the series, and I’m told new episodes will take us to Delhi and Bangkok, Fez and Bologna; to posh villas in hideaways and lithe bodies in cool pools. Why not? We need what’s glitzy and gorgeous to relax us, the shallow and indulgent to ease our minds. At a time of dull programming, “The Steeple Chase” offers this and more. Judging from the audience who watched, the series, like fast food, will be a mainstay in the national diet. Bon appétit!
Joseph Roccasalvo is a professional writer.
