SHOWTIME

• Folksy Queers Return
Showtime’s Queer as Folk begins its fourth season and features 14 new episodes

Last season, Brian (Gale Harold, pictured) risked everything to restore freedom to Liberty Avenue. Now broke and unemployed, he faces the challenge of rebuilding his career, while Justin (Randy Harrison), following an incident of street violence which re-ignites the painful memories of his own bashing and refuels his anger, becomes involved with a vigilante group. • Michael (Hal Sparks), who helped Hunter (Harris Allan) escape his mother and the police, must now face the inevitability of returning to Pittsburgh. He and Ben (Robert Gant) will fight for custody, but can they be parents to a teenager who has been a street hustler and is HIV positive?

After completing rehab, Ted (Scott Lowell) finds it difficult to re-enter life among his friends. It’s especially difficult for Emmett (Peter Paige), as he is left with a great deal of anger and resentment following their breakup. He decides to move in with Melanie (Michelle Clunie) and Lindsay (Thea Gill), who are awaiting the birth of their second child.

The season will end with a major life-changing event, and in addition to the ups and downs of love and relationships, some characters will even experience a brush with mortality that will cause them to call on their close-knit group of friends and families.
The fourth-season premiere of Queer as Folk airs Sunday, April 18, at 9 p.m. on Showtime (www.sho.com). —Troy Carrington

NEXT MONTH FOR MOTHER’S DAY: AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHARON GLESS (Michael’s mom on QAF).

• Showtime Greenlights Our Fathers
An examination of the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal and cover-up goes to film

On the verge of the release of a survey by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops outlining sexual abuse by more than 4,000 priests between 1950 and 2002, Showtime has greenlit Our Fathers, an original film based on Newsweek editor David France's epic examination of the Roman Catholic Church pedophilia scandal and cover-up. In making the recent announcement, Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment for Showtime Networks Inc., said casting is currently under way with pre-production scheduled to begin this month.

While all of the stories and characters in the movie are based in fact, Showtime has scrupulously changed the names of the victims to protect those who are trying to rebuild their lives. “We have no intention of making this movie exploitative,” said Greenblatt. “But when I read France's book, I was compelled to make this movie because the majority of the public has no idea how widespread or complex this issue is or how faithful Catholics were deceived in such epic proportions. The abuse—and the institution that looked the other way for decades—should be exposed so that it can be stopped once and for all.”

Based on France's critically acclaimed new book Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal, the story unfolds in early 2002, when a group of Boston Globe reporters blew open the pedophilia scandal surrounding Father John J. Geoghan and Boston's now-infamous Cardinal Law, who utterly failed at stopping this epidemic. Geoghan, while serving jail time for his crimes, was murdered in prison last fall.

Said France, “I became very emotionally connected to all the people who told me their stories for Our Fathers. These were people who went through tremendously challenging childhoods and went on to become not just survivors but heroes in the Catholic Church crisis. Tom Donnelly’s screenplay really got that. He heard the sadness in their voices, but also the strength and the faith—a faith in the fortitude of the human spirit.”

Revelations over the past two years that this kind of abuse was perpetrated by thousands of priests from across the country have spun the Catholic Church into turmoil. How could so many leaders within the church hierarchy shroud the truth for so long? Why did so many of those involved stand on the sidelines and allow the abuse to continue to ruin lives? Spanning 50 years, the film version of Our Fathers will tell the moving stories of the individuals who overcame the anguish of their abuse as well as the crusading lawyers who took on an arrogant and monolithic church that no one believed would ever admit wrongdoing.

The film will be directed by Emmy Award-winner Dan Curtis (The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Dark Shadows), and written by Thomas Michael Donnelly (Showtime’s A Soldier's Sweetheart and Bonanno: A Godfather's Story).

France's 656-page book, which was published in January 2004 by Broadway/Doubleday, was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "shocking, compelling, heartbreaking, [and] rage-inducing." The New York Times said it was "devastating," "transfixing," and "adopts the ambitious format of works of living history like And the Band Played On and Common Ground." —Suzie Lynde

More information and research on the survey of The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops can be found at www.religionwriters.com/public/tips/021604/021604.shtml, an outside resource.

SUNDANCE

• Borstal Boy

Celebrated in the ’50s and ’60s, Irish playwright and novelist Brendan Behan was the literary world’s bad boy, as well known for brawling and boozing as for his works on paper. In Peter Sheridan’s film Borstal Boy (2000), loosely drawn from Behan’s acclaimed coming-of-age memoir, Shawn Hatosy (A Soldier’s Girl) plays the teenage Behan, who is caught smuggling IRA explosives into Liverpool. It’s behind bars at Borstal (a British reform school) that he learns to love those he previously hated: the English—including the warden’s daughter (Eva Birthistle)—and homosexuals.

Airs on Sundance Channel, Fri., April 9, at 7 p.m.; 14th, 3 & 11:30 p.m.; 17th, 9:45 p.m.; 22nd, 12:30 a.m. & 11:45 p.m.; 27th, 11:30 a.m. & 6:35 p.m. To confirm schedule: www.sundancechannel.com. —TC

• Lord Love a Duck

Veteran screenwriter George Axelrod, who penned The Seven Year Itch for Billy Wilder and adapted The Manchurian Candidate for John Frankenheimer, made his debut in the director’s chair with this 1966 cult satire taking aim at America’s consumer culture. A free-spirited high-school egghead (played by 37-year-old Roddy McDowall!) becomes the mentor and protector of an insecure student (Tuesday Weld) who wants it all. A groovy ’60s time capsule, complete with a beach-party movie parody, a score by Neal (Batman) Hefti, and the redoubtable Ruth Gordon.

Airs on Sundance Channel, Fri., April 30, at 11 p.m. To confirm schedule: www.sundancechannel.com. —Jack Varsi

• Anatomy of a Scene: Saved!

In this installment of Sundance Channel’s original series Anatomy of a Scene, filmmaker Brain Dannelly and his creative collaborators discuss in detail one scene from the new subversive comedy Saved! Recently screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Saved! follows the fortunes of a devout teenager (Jena Malone) at a Baptist high school, whose good works—and their decidedly earthly consequences—cause her to be ostracized by her God-fearing classmates. Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fuget, Martin Donovan, and Heather Matarazzo costar.

Airs on Sundance Channel, Tues., April 27, at 8 p.m.; 30th, 10:30 a.m. & 10:30 p.m. To confirm schedule: www.sundancechannel.com. —SL

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