Television series have featured lots of cops and lawyers and doctors and journalists and so on and so on. But there haven't been a whole lot that featured ministers.
Network-wannabe the WB tries to change that tonight with "7th Heaven" (6 p.m., WGN; 7 p.m., Ch. 30), a series that's entirely about a minister and his family.Stephen Collins and Catherine Hicks stars as Eric and Annie Camden, a minister (from an unspecified denomination) and his wife. They're also the parents of five children - 16-year-old Matt (Barry Watson), 14-year-old Mary (Jessica Biel), 12-year-old Lucy (Beverly Mitchell), 10-year-old Simon (David Gallagher) and 3-year-old Lucy (MacKenzie Rosman).
They're a functional family, as opposed to a dysfunctional family. They love each other and support each other.
Not that they're perfect. The kids bicker and argue in a realistic fashion, and the parents don't always see eye-to-eye.
There are realistic problems, although the solutions seem a bit too easy for most of them.
Their belief in God is just accepted as an ordinary, everyday thing. And making it part of the fabric of the show makes it more effective.
They pray. They say blessings on the food before they eat.
When young Simon prays for a dog, saying that if God really exists He'd make sure he got that dog - Eric's response is quite matter-of-fact.
"First of all, let me assure you there really is a God," Eric says, "and I'd like to congratulate you for going over our heads to get to Him."
Basically, this is a good old-fashioned family show - sort of in the vein of an updated "Waltons." The sort that so many viewers say they miss and want to see again.
It's a good family show, but is it a realistic portrayal of the life of a minister's family? For that, I turned to some pretty good sources - my father-in-law, Clair Shaffer, who's a Methodist minister in Pennsylvania; my mother-in-law, Nancy, who knows what it's like to be a minister's wife; and my wife, Cheryl, who knows what it's like to be a minister's kid.
The consensus was that, while this is a good show in which prayer and religion play a part, any resemblance to the real thing is more than slightly superficial.
"I didn't see anything in there that portrayed a pastor or a minister other than when the choir was singing and he opened the bible and started to read," Clair said. "No phone calls, no running over to someone's house or going to the hospital or funeral directors calling."
And, in fact, the fact that Eric is a minister comes into play only briefly in tonight's pilot. The Camdens could have been almost any family that believes in God.
"Maybe other shows will deal with his job, if he's a minister. At least you'd think so," Nancy said.
In one scene, the fictional minister's wife tries to comfort her 12-year-old daughter, who feels like "a freak" because her friends have begun menstruating and she hasn't. Annie quotes badly from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To every thing there is a season . . . ") - without, apparently, knowing what she was quoting.
Not to give away the punch line, but it made for a cute and funny scene somewhat later. Everyone agreed on that.
"Except that if she was a minister's wife, she would have known that it was in the Bible," Cheryl said.
"Well, now, I can't say I know it all," Nancy said.
"Yeah, but you know it's from the Bible," Cheryl said.
"In a minister's family, the wife would have know what it's from," Clair said.
The Shaffers were somewhat surprised to see the minister take his son to a pool hall.
"He goes to play pool? Are you sure he's a minister?" Nancy said.
"There's something wrong in River City," Clair added.
They were also somewhat taken aback to see the minister and his wife drinking alcohol - although many of their minister-friends and their wives drink.
(There's also a scene in which Eric and Annie are under the kitchen sink, trying to repair it, when they start making out. "We never did that, either," Nancy said with a laugh.)
What the Shaffers absolutely refused to accept was the enormous, gorgeous house the Camdens are living in.
"This minister has a home like that?" Nancy said. "Oh, man! It's ridiculous!"
"No question about it," added her husband.
The show later makes it clear that it's a parsonage that belongs to the church Eric works for.
"Well, what church gives you that kind of house?" asked Nancy, who has lived in a number of parsonages.
Not that all the notes in the show were off-key in terms of accuracy. In one scene, Eric tells his oldest son to be sure to be polite to a parishioner.
"I'm always saying things like that - telling the kids to be nice to the people from church," Nancy said.
And it sounds awfully familiar when young Simon is trying to win his dog by promising to take care of it.
"I don't believe that," Clair said.
"We heard that once," Nancy said.
"Twice," Clair added.
And that's the point. "7th Heaven" is not a documentary about a minister's family, it's a show about a family. And it's a nice show that will entertain both kids and adults.
"Sure, I'd watch it again," Nancy said.