In 1984 a British TV series from London Weekend Television created a sensation with a sequence of three programs called Jesus: The Evidence. The announced purpose of the series was to give viewers up-to-date information and insights on the historical evidence about Jesus: what can be known about him and how historians evaluate that evidence. Although the series began with a balanced approach to the subject, it became increasingly provocative and controversial by inviting as experts on the subject a predominance of scholars whose views reject, or at least call into question, traditional interpretations of the evidence about Jesus. Further, there seems to have been some intention to make the public think that the scholarly majority was trying to suppress the results of new discoveries and new interpretations, since they ran counter to orthodox views. Understandably, some viewers were annoyed at having been apparently deprived of access to new and revolutionary information about Jesus, while many others were shaken by allegedly historical evidence which challenged the traditional understandings of Jesus. When the series appeared on public television in the United States, it did not create the stir here that it did in Great Britain, in part because it was not so widely seen.