Heaven on Earth

• A two part 3 hour drama Sunday 22nd Feb and 2nd March 98 BBC-1 Part 1: Sunday, February 22 at 9 p.m - 10.30 p.m. Second and concluding 90 minute episode shown the following Sunday.
• Screened in Australia Sunday 3rd May, 8.30pm
• Heaven Can Wait nominated for the TV Quick Readers Awards!!

Here is some of the press release courtesy of Jane Brace. Neil plays a complete looney-tunes bible-basher and the part certainly was the most meaty and emotionally challenging one he has had for ages. It was a bit weird seeing him play an unsympathetic character turning nasty.

Neil plays cult leader Richard Bennett- a role taking him from mundane, middle-class graphic designer to power-crazed patriarch of the Community of the Faithful in remotest Wales.

How did he cope with playing the demanding role of cult leader Richard Bennett?

"The first thing you do is kick out the idea that he's just evil because in reality he's sick. He starts as a typical product of the late 20th century - a high flier who possibly spends too much time on work and not enough on his family but apparently he's winning. But then his career and marriage go down the pan simultaneously and his wife's reaction is to take the family off to a commune so he can recover. It's a huge body blow and one that, as the show unfolds, we see he is unable to bounce back from. But, during the course of his nervous breakdown , he grasps at the only straw left in his life - this new opportunity. He uses the skills that served him well in the outside world to plough his way through the hierarchy of the new one.

"By the end of the drama he's been a long time sick. He's deluded; he's locked himself away from the real world and allowed himself to believe it is a very different place where he is untouchable and everyone is subservient to him. It's a downward spiral caused by illness rather than evil and it has horrendous consequences ..."

Pearson admits the role covers a "heavy duty" emotional spread but says that was one of the things that attracted him to the part. He did little research for the role though he did learn carpentry skills like smoke-shaving wood to help him with scenes filmed in the commune's Shaker furniture workshop. But he recalls spending a day with the Moonies when researching a role in another TV drama, Upline. "I wanted to see how they go about sucking you in so I went to their recruitment office in Charing Cross Road. It was Death by Boring Video and I made my excuses and left when they invited me to a country home for the weekend. But I've never been involved in anything like that myself - there's not a big enough vacuum in my life to give an organisation like that a chance to fill it."

" The community we depict in Heaven on Earth is very different to that - it's a complete way of life. You can't tar all religious communities and sects with the same brush and I wouldn't presume to do so. But I think it's unarguable that there are a lot of sects around who prey on the weak and vulnerable, disillusioned and recovering and strip them of their money, their identity and try to mould them in their own image. And those cults are quite rightly vilified. It happens in major religions as well - the fanatic wings of any religion are scary. It's true of militia groups as far as Christianity is concerned and of Hammas as far as Islam goes. God knows there are Jewish extremists in Israel who are even more scary than the little Evangelical groups on street corners."