God, the Devil and Bob

As you may have gathered from reading the other user comments (you did read the other user comments didn't you? Go and read them. Read them? Good.) The concept was brilliant. The animation was very good (I hesitate to say brilliant, but it kind of is). The characters were marvellous.

Then the Americans cancelled it.

They said it was blasphemous.

God and the Devil influence a man's actions and he usually, after wavering slightly to make the plot better, ends up doing the right thing. It shows man as a creature that, whilst fallible, is generally good. That God has faith in man and that as hard as the Devil might try he can't seem to turn man to evil. How is this blasphemous? Well, it's blasphemous because it takes the name of God in (what they construe as) vain. The name of God, Lord, Christ or Jesus are taken in vain on so many other shows that it is almost impossible to count them all. [Side note; ever notice how these shows never take Mohammed or Allah or Vishnu or Gnesha or Buddha in vain? There's political correctness for you.] So why target this show? The character's in it didn't take the Lord's name in vain nearly as often as other shows did. The only difference is that God was there to answer back. Was God out of character? No. Was God callous? No. Did God ever do anything nasty? No. Did God have faith in humanity? Yes. Was God good? Yes. So it was the fact that he was actually there, whether or not he was 'as he should be'.

The people who objected to this seem to be overly sensitive to the portrayal of God. I can see their point; they may see this as the thin end of the wedge and that if they let this go God may be portrayed in another show in a far less favourable light. But their job is done for them by studio executives who would not go anywhere near putting that much effort into broadcasting something that would attract so much protest from so many Christians.

So who are the Americans who were not wrong? The ones that made the show and thought that common sense was a lot more common than it is. A wise man once wrote that the IQ of a mob is the lowest individual IQ divided by the number of people in the mob. This does not just apply to mobs but to any group really.

And just as a final note, before the show was broadcast in the UK it was shown to a number of religious leaders. They saw the show as a good comedy and that it had a very good, very Christian message.

I watched all 13 episodes of this wonderful show, and I'm really suprised that it got canceled. God, the devil, and bob didn't get the ratings or publicity it should have. I think NBC had a lot to do with it, there weren't people looking for shows like this in the "must see TV" line-up. I can see this show doing wonderfully in a time slot on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. I'm the only person that I know as of yet who has seen or heard of this show. Truely sad.

Somebody brought up the Simpson's in this context. It's true: the same narrow minds that fought the Simpsons for Bart's "rebellious attitude" fought this one too. How stupid can you get. While not the greatest show in the world, this was clever, fun, and quite wise on a theological level. In fact, I can't really figure out why a religious person would be against this, unless they are simply looking for something to be offended by, because it makes them happy to get in a paroxysm of moral outrage, regardless of the matter before them.

I'll tell you the difference between the Simpson's and this quick cancellation: we've had a great increase in power, over the last 15 years, of the narrow-minded and censorious. This trend must be fought, or we won't have much culture left.

This was a great show. I guess I can understand why many people would be against it, but weren't people against the Simpsons when it first came out? I remember many groups saying "Eat My Shorts" was blasphemous! I mean, if FOX had listened to those religious groups and canceled the Simpsons, TV would be really different today. God, the Devil and Bob was not given much of a chance to suceed, and it was really funny. I hope another network, perhaps one less obscure, picks it up again someday.

This program was excellent and it's a shame it got cancelled. I really enjoyed it during it's tenure in the UK. I'm not sure why it got such low ratings, maybe it was on the wrong network or on at the wrong time for the target audience but it's a real shame because it was clever and entertaining. The casting was well done and I would have thought that with Nancy Cartwright on board as a voice as well it would have drawn more attention than it did. I would personally like a channel in the UK to pick it up and run repeats. I think it may have been done once already but I would like to see it again. It was on Channel 4 originally.