Dig this

Dig this March 16, 2015

The new USA Network show Dig hasn’t quite hooked me yet. It’s protagonist is an innocent man who suddenly becomes embroiled in an international conspiracy (at least one), which is usually a story I enjoy. And the premise of apocalyptic religious cults conspiring something in Jerusalem seems right up my alley. But I still find myself in wait-and-see mode.

That may be a hard-won wariness that comes from a long history of watching other shows that promised portentous Big Developments that later seemed ill-planned or incoherent. If you tell me the truth is out there, then I’ll be disappointed if your story doesn’t eventually take me out there to some kind of truth that stitches it all together. (I might be particularly reserved in the case of Dig, since co-creator Tim Kring previously brought us Heroes.)

Anyway, since I can’t quite yet unreservedly recommend Dig, allow me to recommend some alternatives:

Gorenberg1. If you’re looking to explore the world of apocalyptic religious cults and their various plans or expectations for the city of Jerusalem, let me again recommend Gershom Gorenberg’s excellent The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. Underline that recommendation if you plan on watching Dig — Gorenberg will get you up to speed on the whole red heifer thing.

2. If you’re looking for a Jason Isaacs fix and want to see him playing a grief-haunted detective with a seamless American accent, check out his short-lived 2012 series, Awake, which is now streaming on Netflix. This was one of the most ambitious network shows in recent memory.

The premise was strange, but the show presents it clearly in a way that sucks you into the story. Isaacs is in a car crash with his wife and son. One of them dies. Or both of them. Or neither. His reality splits in two. One day he’s living with his wife in the aftermath of their son’s death, but then he closes his eyes to sleep and awakens in a world in which his son is alive, but his wife was killed in the crash. Day after day.

The show carried that odd premise into some even odder directions, but whether you stick with the whole season or not, watch the pilot episode, which is an extraordinary, moving and thought-provoking piece of storytelling.

3. Finally, if you’re just looking for a thoughtful, inspiring work of art with religious themes that happens to be titled “Dig,” let me recommend the classic 1992 album by Adam Again.

Yes, they were a “Christian rock” band. Remember those old posters in Christian book stores that marketed “Christian rock” artists by telling you what secular bands they seemed to copy? (“If you like Poison, you’ll love Stryper!”) I once saw Adam Again listed on one of those posters alongside Talking Heads, I guess because both bands once had Howard Finster paintings on album covers. And I once saw them listed alongside R.E.M., I guess because they both had songs about the Cuyahoga.

But Adam Again didn’t actually sound anything like Talking Heads or R.E.M., really. They didn’t sound like anybody but themselves.

Here are a couple of my favorites from Dig, both written and sung by the late great Gene Eugene. This is “Worldwide“:

And this is “Hopeless, etc.“:

 


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