Apparitions: Should Christopher Hitchens be exorcised?

Amused to glimpse a copy of Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great in BBC1's new supernatural drama Apparitions. The book was the property of a demonically possessed loon who denied God's existence. Perhaps now he's sampled waterboarding, Hitch would care to go through an exorcism to see what happens: I am sure he could churn out a 5,000-word report for Vanity Fair on the experience and re-trash Mother Teresa on the way.

Otherwise, I don't think Apparitions all that good. A pity because all the catalogue-driven atheists in the chatterati will relish its cancellation. It's just quite dull and derivative with story turns straight out of The Exorcist, such as the omniscient demon that repeats words said to or by the priest recently. There's even a flight of stairs that The Exorcist's Father Karras might have fallen down.

Apparitions' Martin Shaw has simply placed his Judge John Deed in clerical garb and grown a bit of face moss. TV adores middle-aged male heroes. Frost, Poirot, Tom Barnaby, Dr Tony Hill, Dexter, and many more. All they do is stroll from one scene to another and then ask questions while appearing sceptical. You know their prostates are enlarged and they can only manage a semi these days, but they're still all-there mentally. Scotch helps. Shaw looks like he knows it all. Perhaps his character could do with an ylang-ylang massage. That might sow a few seeds of welcome doubt. There's nothing more annoying than a confident Catholic.