Mulder and Scully and Jenkins and LaHaye
It has been hard to miss NBC's promotions for Revelations, its six-part end-times miniseries that debuts tonight. But almost all of the positive buzz seems to be coming from the network. TV critics and dispensationalists seem agreed that the show is rather … predictable.

"Revelations reminds me of those dreadful end-times films I used to see in church, only with better production values," says The Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart. "Every few minutes a passage from Scripture, though not identified as such, appears ominously on the screen. Not all of these come from Revelation; for instance, the verse 'a little child shall lead them' is from Isaiah, another book often quoted by end-timers."

As such, "non-Christians may have trouble taking its signs and shadows and omens seriously, while some Christians may be put off to see their beliefs mashed into some occult-conspiracy stew," says USA Today's Robert Bianco.

"It's a stark mash of lightning storms and glaring Satanists and overly dramatic music that shouts too loudly for its own good. As it leaps from Ominous Religious Event to Ominous Religious Event, the first hourlong chapter of this six-part series could easily have been called 'Hellsapoppin!'" complains The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert.

The "events, tone, and spiritual underpinnings [are] drawn directly from the apocalyptic predictions of the New Testament's Book of Revelation," explains the San Jose Mercury News's Charlie McCollum. But Weblog just checked, and there's nothing in there about babies surviving Aegean Sea shipwrecks, crucifixes on Mexican mountains, Satan-worshiping killers who don't bleed, and girls who get zapped by lightning for taking the Lord's name in vain. ...