Miracles (TV series)
Miracles is an American mystery drama television series starring Skeet Ulrich and Angus Macfadyen that aired on ABC from January 27 to March 31, 2003. The series created by Richard Hatem and Michael Petroni, the series was dubbed a "spiritual version of The X-Files" by its creators. Following the pilot, David Greenwalt, co-creator of Angel served as the show's executive producer and head writer for the remaining twelve episodes.
Miracles follows Paul Callan, an investigator of modern miracles for the Catholic Church who questions his faith after repeatedly finding mundane explanations for various supposed supernatural phenomena. After he witnesses a true, supernatural miracle that saves his life, only for his findings to be dismissed on a lack of evidence, Paul leaves the Church behind and is approached by Alva Keel to join his organization Sodalitas Quaerito, investigating and cataloging "unexplainable" supernatural phenomena. Along with former police officer Evelyn Santos, Paul and Alva attempt to battle the impending "darkness" before it's too late.
The series premiered as part of ABC's "Super Monday" line-up on January 27, 2003. Six episodes were broadcast on ABC before the series was canceled because of low ratings, with its final broadcast episode drawing five million viewers on March 31, 2003. The series was preempted a number of times during its run, once for a rebroadcast of the documentary special Living with Michael Jackson, and various other times to air repeats or news magazine specials about the then-developing Iraq War. Miracles fans, angered by the cancellation and what they saw as ABC's mismanagement of the show's Monday 10:00pm time slot, began a fan campaign to revive the show. Fans wrote messages on napkins and mailed them to various networks hoping the show would be revived by another network; however, efforts were unsuccessful and the show did not continue past its initial order of thirteen episodes.
Plot
The series begins as Paul Callan, an investigator of modern miracles for the Catholic Church at the Archdiocese of Boston, is feeling frustrated with disappointing groups of believers each time he investigates and disproves the authenticity of a supposed "miracle". Upon the advice of his mentor, Father "Poppi" Calero, Paul takes a sabbatical. Months later while doing humanitarian work in Arizona, Paul receives a phone call from Poppi asking him to investigate the case of a young boy with supposed healing powers in the nearby town of Cottonwood. Paul finally sees a true miracle when he sees that young Tommy Ferguson can truly heal people, but every time Tommy heals someone, his own rare disease worsens. When Paul is involved in a near fatal car accident, Tommy uses his healing power for the last time and dies healing Paul, but not before both of them see Paul's blood form itself into the words "God is Now Here" on his broken windshield.His faith restored, Paul returns to the Church, only for the Monsignor to dismiss his report on a lack of proof. Paul resigns out of frustration and discovers that Poppi never called him about Tommy Ferguson's case. Later, Paul is approached at a diner by a man named Alva Keel, who offers him a job with his organization, Sodalitas Quaerito. Keel tells Paul that his encounter with "hemography" is part of a large, dark impending event; the same miracle has appeared to six other people in the past 25 years, only every other time the message appeared as "God is Nowhere". Paul teams up with Keel and Evelyn Santos, a former police officer, to investigate his paranormal experience and discover a solution to the impending darkness.
Cast
Main
- Skeet Ulrich as Paul Callan, a former investigator of modern miracles for the Catholic Church. Paul was an orphan from a very young age; his mother died when he was only five years old of an unknown ailment, and he never met his biological father. When he was seven years old, he spent two weeks at St. Jerome's Hospital being treated for pneumonia, which he nearly died from. Paul resigned from the church after the monsignor dismissed his report on the Tommy Ferguson case. He then teamed up with Alva Keel and Evelyn Santos and began working for "Sodalitas Quaerito".
- Angus Macfadyen as Alva Keel, a former Harvard professor. While minoring in linguistics at Cambridge University, he began his senior project studying bird calls and recorded several of them on tapes. While playing them back, he began hearing his deceased mother's voice repeating a childhood nickname of his amongst the bird calls. In 1998 he founded Sodalitas Quaerito, a small business that investigates and catalogues various supposed supernatural phenomena, to fund his research.
- Marisa Ramirez as Evelyn Santos, a former police officer and single mother. The father of her child, John, is in prison. Little is known about how she came to work with Keel, but it was revealed in a deleted scene that she was shot in the head in the line of duty, and had a paranormal experience where she believes she saw that there was nothing on "the other side".
Recurring
- Héctor Elizondo as Father "Poppi" Calero, Paul's mentor throughout his entire life, who is a father at the church where Paul grew up and used to work. Appeared in the pilot episode, and then reappeared in later episodes of the series.
- Jacob Smith as Thomas "Tommy" Ferguson, a ten-year-old boy from Cottonwood, Arizona with healing powers. His power was discovered after he hugged his grandmother, who had lung cancer, and told her he hoped she felt better; his grandmother then left the hospital two days later, when her cancer completely disappeared. Sacrificed his own life to save Paul Callan's after his car was hit by a train, leaving him in a state of near death. Tommy appeared in the pilot episode, and then appeared as a ghost in the episodes "Little Miss Lost" and "Paul is Dead".
Production
Origins
Series creator Richard Hatem was sent a screenplay in early 2001 called "Miracles", written by Michael Petroni and owned by Spyglass Entertainment. Hatem assumed that he was being sent the script to re-write, and the script would then be made into a feature film. Hatem recalled in "The Making of Miracles" interview on the Miracles DVD set that he was puzzled when he was sent the script to re-write, because he thought it was "pretty wonderful as it ". Hatem's agent later confirmed to him that Spyglass actually wanted him to use the screenplay as a jumping off point to create a one-hour television series, "a sort of 'spiritual X-Files".When Hatem met with executives at Spyglass, he brought with him a "good luck charm," the book The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism by Herbert Thurston, which Hatem said Miracles later "evolved into." Thurston was an Anglican minister who investigated spiritual phenomena during the 1920s and 1930s, when, according to Hatem, "spiritualism was still popular in America." The book examined which phenomena were signs from God, and which were "something else." After discussing this with Megan Wolpert and Suzanne Patmore, executives at Spyglass, Hatem said "what expected would be a 20-minute meeting turned into a three hour meeting, where ideas were flowing back and forth." Hatem claimed the show was born "that day, in that room" in March 2001. Hatem, Wolpert, and Patmore liked the idea that a character who came from a strict religious background and was raised to believe that any strange occurrence was either a sign from God or a sign from the devil, was suddenly thrust into a world where various phenomena "crossed those boundaries" and could not be classified as "good or bad" because they had elements of both. Hatem believes this is the element that "creates the drama," and makes the show "fun and scary."
Hatem, Wolpert, and Patmore researched various supernatural and religious folklore and found that most of those types of encounters could "find a nexis in , and could do all kinds of stories". The three also agreed that " could not be a show about the Catholic Church ABC was not interested in taking that on". Hatem referenced in the Miracles DVD interview a short-lived series that aired on ABC during the 1997–98 season called Nothing Sacred, which centered on the Catholic Church in the 1970s. While the show's main character was raised with a Catholic upbringing, Hatem did not want to make the series about a "Vatican conspiracy". Hatem did however acknowledge that the pilot episode transitioned from religious phenomena to paranormal phenomena, and that the transition between "'religion' and 'general paranormal' all the way through, because the questions kept coming back: 'Is this guy a priest?'; 'How do we explain he's not a priest?'; 'How do we explain that his points of view are not the points of view of the Catholic Church?'". Hatem also acknowledged that as they were preparing to "sell a show whose pilot has priests, and a monsignor", the Church was in the midst of a sex abuse scandal that was being reported in newspapers all over the country. Hatem recalled that "the joke was, ' on the air long enough to generate controversy'; we would have loved controversy, but we flew so low under the radar that I don't think anyone had a chance to be offended or even construe a way to take offense".
Casting
The production team had many ideas for casting, and Richard Hatem says that Skeet Ulrich was one of the first ideas for an actor to play Paul Callan. However, the producers believed that Ulrich was "unavailable", and that he was taking a break from acting and living with his wife and kids in Virginia. Among the other actors who auditioned for Paul Callan were Matthew Fox, known for his starring role on the series Party of Five and who went on to star in Lost, and Jason Priestley, which Hatem says "would have been an excellent casting pun". During auditions, a Miracles producer learned that Ulrich had been sent the script by his agents and managers, and that he had "really responded to it". Matt Reeves, the director of the pilot, was impressed that he was able to exude soulfulness, emotion, and intelligence without speaking.Hatem said that when casting the part of Alva Keel, a mysterious person was necessary for the role, "someone who would draw Paul away from the Church and bring him into this strange world of paranormal investigation". Donald Sutherland was an original casting idea, because the producers originally wanted someone who was around the same age as Hector Elizondo, to persuade Paul to leave behind one father figure and follow another. However, after many people auditioned, the producers took note of Angus Macfadyen's ability to without speaking, like Ulrich, portray intensity and mystery. The casting of Macfadyen gave the producers the idea of instead of following a new father figure, Paul Callan would join a group based on "brotherhood", "someone who was more of an age contemporary with Paul".
Hatem recalls casting the part of Evelyn Santos as "difficult, because technically, she doesn't exist in the pilot; she has one shot in the first episode, and in the original pilot, she was played by a different actress". Because Evelyn has no real lines in the pilot episode, extensive casting was not held. After the pilot was picked up, the producers faced the challenge of casting a character "for whom had never written anything". Producers cast Marisa Ramirez very late in the audition process, after the episode "The Ghost" had already been filmed. Ramirez was cast because the producers wanted someone "watchable" and at the same time "normal, and real" as a contrast to Paul and Keel, who had each lived unusual lives. Hatem described the three leads as a "weird, paranormal Brady Bunch" because of each of the characters' non-nuclear families.