Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville to present new RTE religious documentary

The documentary follows Bonneville— who has a theology degree from Cambridge University— to Jerusalem as he tells the story of the final six days of Jesus' life.

The star discovers how a perfect storm of social, political and religious factors brought an itinerant Jewish healer and preacher into conflict with the most powerful forces in his world and led, in just a under a week, to his agonising and humiliating death.

"This is a place where history and faith come together," Bonneville said in a statement from his location in Israel.

"Whether you are a person of faith or of none, you cannot escape the fact that the last six days of this man’s life, and his death, changed the world," he added.

The hour-long special is scheduled to air on RTE One around Easter 2018. It uses Bonneville's storytelling, location drama, graphics, and insight from leading academics in order to shed new light on the 2,000 year old story.

RTE have teamed up for the first time with both ARTE and US programme syndicator American Public Television (APT) for the production.

RTÉ and ARTE signed an agreement in 2016 sees Irish cultural content brought to international audiences. Both parties pledged to contribute at least €250,000 per annum for an initial period of two years to develop co-productions throughout 2017 and 2018 with a focus on documentaries, arts, culture, factual, history and natural history.

APT is the leading syndicator of high-quality, top-rated programming to the US’s network of 360-plus public television stations, has co-produced the show with ARTE and RTÉ, and will also retain US public broadcasting rights, distributing the documentary under the title Jesus – Countdown to Calvary.