内容摘要：Large U.S. and former South Vietnamese flags fly in the wind in the parking lot of Asian Garden Mall in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, Calif., April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Large U.S. and former South Vietnamese flags fly in the wind in the parking lot of Asian Garden Mall in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, Calif., April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

was a child growing up in New York’s Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.“Who are these people? What is a saint?” Scorsese recalls. “The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don’t see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?”

For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he’s finally realized it inan eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media.The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Matti Leshem and Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year.

In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, “The Saints” emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz.Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather’s hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind.

Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

SCORSESE: I go back to my early childhood and respite and the sanctuary I found in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. Not being able to play sports or be a tough guy in the streets. And, you know, the streets were pretty tough down there. I found a sanctuary in that place. It’s now a basilica. The first Catholic Cathedral in New York in 1810, 1812. It figures in “Gangs of New York.” The Know Nothings and anti-immigration groups attacked it in 1844. Archbishop Hughes fought back. It’s a place rife with history. In this contemplation, I was curious about these figures, these statues, and what they represented. They had stories.How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan shark. This man likes to dine while watching his goons torture delinquent borrowers. Needless to say, the two young men need to escape — and far.

So they join the expedition to planet Nilfheim. Filling out his job application, Mickey, a hapless chap with an American grifter accent apparently subconsciously inspired by Steve Buscemi in “Fargo,” fails to read the fine print. He’s distracted by the smell of a woman’s hair.It’s rather a shock, then, when he learns what he signed up for. During the four-plus year journey, he’ll be a human guinea pig, subjected to countless fatal indignities. Sending him out to absorb cosmic radiation, they ask Mickey to track the moment his skin burns and the moment he becomes blind. When his hand falls off and floats by the ship’s windows, nobody takes notice.

That’s because a human “printer” awaits — looking a lot like an MRI machine — ready to reprint him, with memory backup. Human printing has been banned on Earth, but is legal in space, where there is also, unfortunately, no worker’s comp.Things are bleak on the ship. Food is rationed severely. Sex takes up too many calories, so it is banned, by none other than Kenneth Marshall, the wealthy, pompous, thin-skinned leader of the expedition (Mark Ruffalo) and his unpleasantly perky wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette). This is inconvenient for Mickey, whose shipboard life is made bearable only by Nasha (Naomi Ackie), his brave and loving girlfriend, but they seem to get it on nonetheless, between Mickey’s deaths and new lives.