AMC’s Preacher is certainly a show that caught me by surprise. At its core, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s adaption of Garth Ennis’s classic cult comic is a story about three awfully forgiving friends. Given the bizarre, frequently violent and contentious situations they find themselves in, they’d certainly have to be.
On the surface, one cold easily get the impression it was a show only designed to shock people and nothing else, and that’s certainly one of its intentions, but there’s a legitimately engaging story underneath all of the mayhem. The chemistry that Dominic Cooper as the outlaw turned small town minister Jesse Custer, Ruth Negga as his former partner-in-crime Tulip O’Hare and Joseph Gilgun as the roguish vampire Cassidy have together prevents Preacher from drowning in its own grit.
For Jesse, trying to keep his faith and church attendance up in the middle of a sordid small-town in Texas is difficult enough as it is without the fantastical problems he soon finds himself facing. When the center of your town’s economy is spearheaded by someone as unreligious and cutthroat as Odin Quinncanon, played sinisterly by Jackie Earle Haley, the odds are already stacked against you. The odious town sheriff Hugo Root, played by W. Earl Brown with his trademark ability to be scummy, isn’t too fond of poor Jesse either. His sullen, disfigured son Eugene (Ian Coletti) is one of the few people in town who actually looks up to him.
Needless to say, things go from bad to strange to worse and then to even stranger when a mysterious entity known as Genesis travels through space and finds it way to Earth. It inhabit and kills various priests across the globe, finally settling on our hapless and hard drinking hero. Jesse then finds he has a supernatural ability to persuade people to obey his will, which he begins to use more and more often. He’s convinced it must be the word of God himself.
This is not an opinion shared by Fiore (Tom Brooke) and DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef), a pair of angels who are responsible for keeping Genesis out of the wrong hands. And of course, said hands include any and all mortals, as Genesis’s power is not without its side effects- which can be rather gruesome.
These two are an immensely entertaining duo- Brooke is great as the consistently nervous Fiore, still apparently lamenting his work despite his and DeBlanc’s ability to survive attacks from demonic foes hunting Genesis, and Yusef is equally fun as the more assertive of the two.
All the while, Tulip is consistently pressuring Jesse to help her in a revenge job relating back to their outlaw days. Negga and Cooper are fun to watch whether they’re arguing or flirting, as Tulip is the more cynical of the two and doesn’t buy Jesse’s insistence he’s reformed. Her dynamic with Gilgun’s Cassidy is equally intriguing, though once he arrives in town- following a wildly fun fight on an airplane- he sparks up a fast, if contentious friendship with the grizzled preacher and becomes the voice of reason as Genesis slowly corrupts him.
Meanwhile, flashbacks abound that reveal Jesse’s past, the tragedy involving his father and his early relationship with Tulip that show how he became the person he is. There are also a number of ominous, well directed cold openings featuring Graham McTavish as the Saint of Killers, the comic’s premiere antagonist. More than likely he’ll play a much larger role in upcoming seasons.
What makes Preacher work is its dark sense of humor and love for its protagonists, in spite of the cartoonish gore and heavy themes. Jesse’s determination to be a morally upstanding person in the middle of his crapsack environment gives the audience something to remain invested in throughout his and his friend’s ordeals. Even Cassidy, who is upfront and honest about his many faults, has plenty of moments where he forms genuine connections. The general theme of the show is that these three, in spite of their past sins, nevertheless deserve a break. That affection mixed with the sense of camaraderie between them helps balance out how insane the show can get.
I can easily recommend it based on that as well as its droll (if grim) wit and some fun action scenes. So far Rogen and Goldberg have made an adaption that’s remarkably different from Ennis’s original comic in many ways, but hardly betrays its essence.