Messiah complex: Queer as Folk creator Russell T. Davies continues his reign as TV's holy terror with The Second Coming.

He brought guy-on-guy anilingus into people's living rooms with the original U.K. Queer as Folk and questioned our ideas about attraction with the gay-man-falls-for-straight-woman drama Bob and Rose. Now creator Russell T. Davies has found religion. Well, sort of.

In his absorbing new miniseries The Second Coming (BBC America, premiering September 20), Davies asks us to imagine what would happen if the Son of God returned today in the lanky body of a virginal Manchester video store clerk named Steve Baxter (Christopher Eccleston of The Others). "It's an idea I had about nine years ago," says Davies, 40, calling from the south of France where he's taking a well-deserved holiday, "but I thought, I won't get anyone to listen to me until I'm further on in my career: Then Queer as Folk came along and opened more doors than I ever could have imagined."

Though the writer is an avowed atheist, his goal with The Second Coming was to create a human drama that treated believers respectfully while calling into question certain tenets of Christianity that have always puzzled him. "Part of religion's lack of compassion is based, I think, on some sort of principle that this life doesn't matter, that it's just preparation for the next," he says. "It's a very strange argument to predicate things on."

The central characters in The Second Coming are straight. However, there is a scene where a gay pubgoer challenges organized religion's history of homophobia. "I find that scene a little clumsy, to be honest," reveals the writer, "but I included it because increasingly, gays are the one group that people can unashamedly attack, with no reservations, merely for existing. What s that about?"

If there's anyone who can take some credit for helping change attitudes through media images, it's Davies, the father of the international phenomenon the is Queer as Folk. "I recently got satellite television," he says, when asked for his thoughts on the U.S. version of the show, "and as I flicked through the 500 channels I was stopped by the image of Brian and Justin kissing on the American Queer as Folk. I thought, My God, that's not just two men kissing. It's two men I helped to create kissing. I was so pleased that it existed, because no matter how much we say there's more gay representation than before, it's still a wasteland. I hope the show runs and runs and runs." And spawns even more T-shirts, shopping bags, and refrigerator magnets? "Oh, sure," chirps Davies. "I got the American Queer as Folk calendar up in my office, and I tick off the days, which is just so bizarre and so marvelous."

No merchandise yet for Davies's next series, the small-town drama Mine All Mine, though there are gay characters. "There's a teenager whose entire family knows that he's gay and they're just waiting for him to say it," says Davies, who has been romantically involved with a customs officer named Andrew for over three years. "Plus, there's a wheelchair-bound lesbian. You can't go wrong with a wheelchair-bound lesbian."

Hensley is the author of Screening Party (Alyson Books).