I Heard This Was Intended To Be a Satire

I saw this miniseries back when it aired in 1999 and thought it was awful...if you take it as intending to be a Biblical movie with an openly-religious theme, which is how it was marketed to be.

However, I've heard that the screenwriter is an atheist and wrote this movie intended as a satire. Honestly, I still don't think it works even if you take it that way, but this does soften some of the criticisms.

I think he intended to portray Noah and his wife as buffoons and God as arbitrary. That's why there was so much random comedy thrown into the story, because he was trying to make fun of the Noah's Ark story.

My guess is that his original script was more satiric, but NBC changed things up, trying to sell it as a traditional Biblical miniseries to play around Easter, since those always have a market, and the result was a badly edited mess.