A Forgotten Trope, largely tapering off in The '80s and '90s. Often, when channels were finishing up for the night, they would show a short religious programme.
These segments were often produced in order to comply with regulatory mandates to provide a specified amount of broadcasting "in the public interest." They tended to consist of a speaker, usually a clergyperson, delivering a short sermon or reading straight to camera, although there were some variations in the format. Depending on the editorial bent of the channel in question, they could sometimes vary in tone and style from the most typical instances of a Christian minister reading from The Bible and go in a more philosophical or literary direction than a religious one.
Since the programmes often featured speakers unaccustomed to appearing on television, their style of delivery could sometimes be comically stiff or cringingly earnest, lending them an air of a Kitschy Local Commercial, but for religion rather than a discount carpet emporium. This made the format ripe for Parody.
Examples:
Live-Action TV- The most likely Trope Maker is The BBC with The Epilogue, which was first broadcast as a radio programme in 1926 before appearing on TV, making this trope Older Than Television.
- ITV left the regions to their own devices to produce these, resulting in many different examples across the network:
- Anglia Television: The Living Word
- Grampian Television: Reflections
- LWT: Sit Up and Listen
- Thames Television: Night Thoughts
- STV: Late Call, although other segments broadcast at different times of the day, such as Morning Call and Evening Call, were also seen.
- TSW: Postscript, Nightcall
- TVS: Company. This varied from the usual format in that it featured two or three people discussing a theme around a kitchen table.
- Tyne Tees: Blessed Are They
- RTÉ:
- A Prayer at Bedtime, which consisted of a short prayer being read over some stock footage.
- Varying slightly from the usual format is The Angelus, a call to prayer to the Virgin Mary signalled by the tolling of a bell. Originally broadcast on radio, it's shown on television just before the main evening news at 6pm. In the past, screens would show whatever holy stock image was on hand, but in The '90s this changed to short films showing people going about their business, only to stop what they're doing and turn their heads contemplatively to the middle distance. This particular format has become something of a meme and has been parodied in YouTube videos. Over time, the images shown in the films have become more secular and abstract, to the point where they look more like B-Roll.
- The BBC:
- Radio 4 still has Thought for the Day incorporated into the Today programme, which features speakers from a wide variety of faiths.
- Radio 2 has a similar programme called Pause for Thought.
In-Universe Examples
Live-Action TV- Monty Python's Flying Circus: One sketch parodies The Epilogue, with a cleric and a humanist who, instead of discussing the existence of God, attempt to decide the question by wrestling each other.
- Not the Nine O'Clock News: One sketch is a parody of poetry readings that were sometimes delivered in lieu of a sermon, with a reading of the poem Abou Ben Adhem with multiple readers. It's all pretty standard except that Rowan Atkinson's lines are completely unintelligible.
- Saturday Night Live parodied sermonettes in 1978 with one from the Church of Confusion.
- A Scare at Bedtime on RTÉ directly parodies its namesake mentioned above by having two crass puppets tell each other horror stories.
- Scotch and Wry saw Rikki Fulton roast Late Call into oblivion with the Reverend I.M. Jolly.
- The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Comedian David Steinberg would deliver parody sermonettes on the show. One of these had the risqué line "They literally grabbed the Jews by the Old Testament", which is widely considered to have been The Last Straw that got the show cancelled.
- Spitting Image: One episode features a direct parody of Thames' Night Thoughts hosted by Ian Paisley.
- A Spike Milligan sketch
featured the Reverend R. Sleeker discussing the subject of women in the clergy.
- The Argentinian humor program Cha Cha Cha had a sketch called "Todos juntos en capilla" (double entendre in Spanish meaning both "All together in [a] chapel" and "All together in tenterhooks"). In it, an unnamed priest told the parables of the martyr Peperino Pómoro, whose stories were told with devotion even as they usually mentioned Peperino participating in some unsavory, dubious, or lewd activity and being afterward pursued by their outraged followers. The stories were usually improvised, and the names of characters and places were related to celebrities and public people of the time. The Catholic Church was very critical of the sketch and it successfully pressured to get it out of the show.
Music
- Insane Clown Posse: Somewhat of a meta example. On The Great Milenko, the track "Hellalujah" has lots of religious themes about televangelism. The track even opens with the sound of a TV changing channels. So why is it here? Because it's at the near-end of the album, being track 13 of 16.
- Oddity Archive: One episode features a recreation of a network sign-off the for the fictional KLAK-13 network, which also includes a parody sermonette slot titled "Give Us This Day". The slot is hosted by Pastor George Needlesman of the Needmoney Church in Beverly Hills, CA.
