You gotta have faith

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — "Eli Stone" is about a lawyer who might be a prophet. And it's one of the most entertaining shows on television.

"I think it's resonated with people because they can laugh and cry in a single hour," said executive producer Marc Guggenheim. "I think it's because it deals with universal issues of spirituality and faith, and I don't mean that in a dogmatic kind of way. I mean that in a human condition kind of way."

Eli (Jonny Lee Miller) is not exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to end up as a prophet. When the series began, he was a hard-headed, driven corporate attorney whose clients were generally the bad guys with all the money. When he started having visions that were either the result of an aneurysm or God, Eli didn't immediately embrace the idea that it might be the latter.

He didn't make the connection even though his first vision was of George Michael singing "You've got to have faith" while dancing on the coffee table in Eli's living room.

"Eli Stone" allows Guggenheim and executive producer Greg Berlanti and their team to explore questions of faith in a prime-time network television show.

"Everyone, including the most atheist of atheists, has asked, 'Is there something bigger than ourselves? What's our place in the universe? What's our relationship to other people?"' Guggenheim said. "And the show traffics in that area. It traffics in questions of the heart. The show has a lot of heart."

What it doesn't have is any overt religion.

"Our mission statement for the show ... was to just make it as big a tent as humanly possible," Guggenheim said. "That's one of the reasons why we kept it about spirituality versus religion, which has a different connotation."

We see religious people, but "Eli Stone" doesn't promote Catholics or Protestants or Muslims or Jews or Mormons or any other church.

"When Greg and I started talking about the series, one of the things we talked about was how we kind of wanted to contribute to sort of a larger discussion of spirituality," Guggenheim said. "The word 'religion' connotes you're either this sect or that sect or this belief or that belief, and we wanted it to be completely inclusive.

"And I always joke — semijoke — that this show is sort of the religious show for atheists. It should appeal to people of every religious stripe because, like I said, I truly believe that, even if you're an atheist, you have an element of spirituality in you. Everyone does."