We're anxiously awaiting Natascha McElhone's debut as Sister Josepha Montifiore in NBC's Revelations.

While McElhone may very well be the most attractive television nun to date, she's still in good company.

One of the first, and perhaps the most memorable television nuns to hit the airwaves was Sally Field's Flying Nun (1967 - 70). Fresh off her role as Gidget, Field played the happy-go-lucky Sister Bertrille whose slender frame allowed the wind to catch her oversized coronet and carry her aloft.

Things got a bit more serious -- and exploitative -- for television nuns in the 1984 made-for-TV movie Shattered Vows. Based on the authobiography of psycholoogist and ex-nun Dr. Mary Gilligan Wong, Valerie Bertinelli played Wong as a young nun torn between her vocation and her romantic desires for a priest.

In 1986, Perry Mason exonerated a nun charged with the murder of a priest.

Audiences saw the return of a nun to episodic television in the Father Dowling Mysteries (1989). Tracy Nelson played Sister Stephanie "Steve" Oskowski, the Dr. Watson to title character Father Frank Dowling's Sherlock Holmes, played by Tom Bosley.

Josephine Byrnes		Lisa Hensley

Australians were treated to a star-studded cast of nuns in the TV mini-series Brides of Christ (1991) featuring Josephine Byrnes and Lisa Hensley as nuns during the tumultuous Vatican II era.

HBO brought us a tough, no-nonsense nun in the gritty prison drama Oz. Rita Moreno played the prison's spiritual advisor and addiction counselor.

Rita Moreno plays Sister Pete in HBO's Oz

TV nuns drew a tremendously faithful audience in Italy with the 2004 television adaptation of the classic Italian novel "The Betrothed" (I Promessi Sposi). The TV mini-series, dubbed Renzo e Lucia, focused on the romance between the story's two principal characters.

Perhaps the most sexually exploitative nun television series to date, "Renzo e Lucia" featured full frontal nudity and steamy love scenes.

As attractive as Natascha McElhone is, "Revelations" is a television drama on shaky ground with a touchy American audience. It's doubtful there will be any romance involved with McElhone's character or even any hints of exploitation.

Still, it's worth a shot, if for nothing else, than to see the sexy McElhone in the habit. If the show is successful, perhaps we'll see a new era of nunsploitation television!

Revelations premieres at 9 p.m. Wednesday on NBC.

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