Preacher, Season 2, by Sam Catlin et al. (Amazon Prime) | review

Jesse Custer (played by Dominic Cooper) used to be a preacher, albeit not a very good one. His life was turned upside-down, and not for the first time, when he gained the power of Genesis, a heavenly being. It had previously tried to join with Tom Cruise, with explosive results, but seems quite comfortable with Jesse. It gives him the power to command anyone, as long as they can hear him, and as long as they have a soul. By season two he has an uneasy romance with with passionate criminal Tulip O’Hare (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) and an uneasy friendship with dissolute vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun). (Church helper Emily from season one does not return.) God has wandered away from heaven, but he loves jazz music, so they come to New Orleans in search of him. Meanwhile, the Grail tries to get its teeth into Jesse Custer, the Saint of Killers is on his way, Cassidy has to learn a bit of responsibility, and poor old Eugene Root has to deal with Hitler (a brilliant Noah Taylor). It’s a season that features some of the most shocking scenes ever seen on television. Maybe it’s not quite up to the extremely high standards of season one, but it’s still a great show, and it looks like season three will be a corker, drawing on the comic’s very best issues. Stephen Theaker ****

Preacher, Season 1, by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and chums (Amazon Prime Video) | review by Stephen Theaker

The comic Preacher was in development for so long, first as a film and then as a television series, that you might easily have concluded that there was something fundamentally unfilmable about the project. You – okay, I – might have thought there was no way this programme, having finally made it to the screen, could possibly live up to the standards of the comic. And it’s quite an old comic now. Would it still work? Well, anyone who had those thoughts, me included, has been proven utterly wrong by a programme that rollicked with an energy rarely seen on television, that has left every other programme since feeling muted and low-key. But not everyone has read the comic, and the show is not quite the same as the comic, so I should say something about the story. Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) is a half-assed preacher in a dirty, rotten town. His church helper Emily (played by Lucy Griffiths, the former Maid Marian in the BBC’s Robin Hood) has a crush on him, but he’s in no fit state to notice. Then three lightning bolts strike his life. Genesis, the offspring of an angel and a demon, embeds itself within his body, giving him the power to command. The vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) drops out of an aeroplane and pals up with Jesse in a bar. And old flame Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) roars back into town, wanting Jesse to help her get revenge on an old colleague who left them in the wind. All of a sudden Jesse’s in the middle of a lot of trouble, so it’s a good thing he is surprisingly handy in a fight. It seems as if this show might, like The Walking Dead, cluster its seasons around particular locations, as this one is mainly set in the town of Annville, but it works very well, and at the end of a very satisfying season it’s a treat to know how much more from the comics is still in store. The cast is brilliant, coping with the shifts in tone from horror to comedy as if it was all the same thing, and without exception perfectly portraying the characters we’ve loved and loathed from the comics. Credit to Jeanie Bacharach, casting director, who must have clapped herself on the back for a job well done after watching each episode. One minute it reminds you of Justified or Fargo, the next it’s Monty Python or Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all while successfully reclaiming its storylines from Supernatural in a way that Constantine didn’t quite manage. Altogether it adds up to something totally new. Confident, brash and bloody, I reckon it’s my favourite programme on television right now. *****