Entertainment

The joke’s on Jesus

Annie Potts and Leslie Bibb star as mother and daughter. (ABC)

We’re not afraid to say it: Good Christian Bitches, the original name of ABC’s newest drama about a gaggle of catty women, is now called “GCB” to keep network censors away.

Changing the name doesn’t mean the show will sidestep controversy. It’s set in Dallas and tells the stories of five Christian women, although many of their actions come across as decidedly un-Christian.

“I’m a card-carrying Presbyterian,” says Robert “Bobby” Harling, the show’s creator and executive producer, who’s written such movies as “Steel Magnolias,” “First Wives Club” and “Soapdish.” “We are addressing American life right now and it’s a wonderful opportunity. There are all sorts of things going on in America under the name of religion.”’

Kristin Chenoweth, who plays the show’s queen bee, Carlene, also is a Christian. “This is a world I understand very well. I grew up in church,” says the Broadway and TV star. “That’s why it cracks me up when there’s this controversy about Christians not wanting to watch the show. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you are taking life too seriously. We’re shedding light on the humanity of Christianity and I love that. I wouldn’t do anything that made fun of my God or my religion.”

Besides Chenoweth, “GCB” stars Leslie Bibb, Miriam Shor, Jennifer Aspen, Marisol Nichols and Annie Potts. The series bears a certain resemblance to “Desperate Housewives,” although this one is firmly anchored in high-society Dallas and is based on the book “Good Christian Bitches” by Kim Gatlin.

Like other shows centered on female friendships, and there have been surprisingly few — “Desperate,” “Sex and the City,” “Girlfriends” — “GCB” is about a group of women who define what Carrie Bradshaw once called “frenemies.” The women love each other, but they have a funny way of showing it.

“These women approach their battles with a verve that I think is very Texan,” says Harling. “I think we just expect bigger things from them, including their hair.”

“GCB” kicks off with a dopey scene in which a man and woman steal stacks of cash from a home vault and head to Mexico. Along the way, the woman decides to help the man, er, relax, while he’s driving, sending them to their deaths over a Malibu cliff.

Cut to Amanda Vaughn (Bibb), the man’s betrayed wife, who’s having to sell her Santa Barbara mansion after it’s been discovered that her dead husband not only cheated on her but lost everything running a Ponzi scheme.

Amanda is forced to pack up her two kids and her life and return home to her very rich, very Texan mother, Gigi Stopper (Potts).

Now that Amanda’s back on Gigi’s turf, she has to live Gigi’s rules. And that means returning to church, where Amanda runs into everyone she knew — and bullied — in high school, when she was a star. Amanda’s trying to leave the past behind, but her old friends — Carlene (Chenoweth), Cricket (Shor), Sharon (Aspen) and Heather (Nichols) — have kept the old memories fresh.

“Carlene is a God-fearing, husband-loving, Republican, church-going, rich socialite mother,” says Chenoweth. “She really does believe in the Bible and she does pray and she does want to do good. But imagine the bully who bullied you so horribly coming back and upsetting what you’ve established.”

“Hypocrisy and duplicity aren’t things you find solely in Dallas, Texas, or among women,” says Shor, a veteran theater actress.

“There’s such complexity to the friendships between women in real life. It can be a fun place for a television series to explore. In this show, these relationships are a battle and the armor is incredibly painful shoes, jewels and big hair.”

GCB

Tonight, 10 p.m., ABC