The Nativity

BBC1's The Nativity was, in my immediate view, one of the very best biblical dramatisations that I have seen because it didn't simply reproduce, in the manner of most Nativity plays, the familiar elements of the story in the forms with which we have become familiar (although it did reproduce these). Instead, because screenwriter Tony Jordan understood both what the story meant in human terms for those caught up in it and what it has come to mean for many of us in terms of salvation history, Jordan was able to movingly dramatise the human cost and challenge of the incarnation.

The changes which Jordan made to the chronology of the stories told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the additions to those stories in terms of fleshing out the back stories and personalities of the central characters worked, not because they were literally true to the way the stories are told in those Gospels, but because they were emotionally and symbolically true to the meaning of the stories. The final stable scene with Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Shepherds and Magi is not accurate biblically and is the stereotypical end to most Nativity plays and yet was deeply moving, in a way that most Nativity plays are not, because we had travelled emotionally with these characters and so shared the impulses which led them to worship this child.

The quality of the writing, characterisation, and acting was exceptionally high in the production, with Tatiana Maslany's portrayal of Mary being the standout performance, but it was Jordan's understanding of the emotional and symbolic heart of the story which made the familiar story with its familiar elements profound and moving all over again.

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John Coltrane - Psalm.