You know, the world would be a better place if more ghosts showed up and told doctors to go out and improve the management of health clinics serving underserved communities:
I am a total Jennifer Ehle stan, and as her Twitter feed suggested, she was nervous about this getting picked up — other than one appearance in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, she’s never done American network television before — so I’m happy for her that CBS decided to pick up A Gifted Man. If you’re not familiar with her work other than the brief glimpses you might have gotten in The Adjustment Bureau and The Kings Speech, a brief primer on her work is here.
Especially because of the affection I bear her, I hope that the show is good, not merely on the air. It would be a bit frustrating if this was yet another story where a scientific type is brought closer to god and embraces the error of his cynicism by a loving miracle, if only because those shows are super-cliche (also, science always loses, which is a bummer). I’d be interested to see something more along the lines of Mark Salzman’s wonderful Lying Awake, about a nun who has to reconcile herself to the scientific source of her intense spiritual visions. It would be much more interesting for Patrick Wilson’s character to have to make actual choices, instead of simply being beatifically haunted.