Passion Play staged by The BBC on the streets of Manchester on Good Friday 2006, told through pre-existing songs from from Manchester artists.
Provides examples of:
- The Cover Changes the Meaning: Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by The Smiths goes from being a song about the frustration of being unable to identify the root cause of your unhappiness to a song about Judas bitterly regretting his betrayal of someone he loved and not being able to understand why he’s let himself be used as a puppet of a regime that openly detests him and his people.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The show leans into the idea of Jesus as someone existing on the margins of society who was vulnerable to the machinations of an overreaching state in order to reflect contemporary concerns about the UK government’s participation in The War on Terror.
- Expy: Darren Morfitt as Jesus bears more than a passing resemblance in appearance and affect to Sam Tyler from Life on Mars (2006), one of the biggest TV shows in Britain at the time that just happened to be set in Manchester.
- Friendly Local Chinatown: The procession passes through Manchester’s Chinatown at one point.
- Narrator All Along: The audience doesn't find out that The Narrator is Pontius Pilate until Jesus is brought before him for trial.
- Recycled In Space: It’s the crucifixion restaged in Manchester in 2006.
