The Churchmen: Season 1

A French-language soap opera focusing on a group of novices beginning their studies for the priesthood at the contemporary Capuchin Seminary in Paris, this series offers lots of high drama about crises of faith, set against the backdrop of Machiavellian church politics. The head of the venerable institution is a progressive thinker who needs funds to repair his chapel but is at loggerheads with his immediate superior, an ambitious bishop campaigning to be the head of the French Catholic establishment. Among his new recruits are a naïve provincial shocked at any horseplay among his fellows; an ex-convict haunted by the fact that he murdered a man; the son of a rich businessman engaged in financial chicanery threatening the family, a young man trying to escape his troubled mother and sister, and an adoptee struggling with emotional turmoil. The novices face an array of difficulties along the way: heterosexual and homosexual urges, sudden domestic emergencies, the realization that many veteran priests are deeply flawed, opposition to their beliefs from small-minded outsiders, the attraction of drugs and clubs, and frustration over the Church's failure to address socioeconomic problems in the wider society—as well as conflicts among themselves. All of this unfolds while ecclesiastical machinations are underway to oust the revered rector, a plot strand that reaches all the way to the papal apartments in Rome and eventually touch on the Vatican's diplomacy with China. Dramatically overstuffed, the series is nonetheless expertly produced and well acted, winding up with many cliffhangers that will certainly whet the appetite for more. Compiling all eight episodes from the 2012 first season, this is a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)