Praise the Lord & Pass the Collection Box
Donal O’donoghue spreads the good news of The Righteous Gemstones
In the beginning there was God. And God created lots of things like the internet and fast food and TV. And TV in turn begat Love Island and Made in Chelsea and kept on begatting so that you could not separate the singer from the song, especially on that show Unmasked. And finally, it came to pass that telly begat The Righteous Gemstones, a comedy about a family of televangelists from South Carolina who trust in God and the money that can be made in his (most definitely a ‘him’ hereabouts) name.
Verily, The Righteous Gemstones takes the mickey out of televangelism. It also puts the mickey into it (season one has more wobbly bits than the entire back catalogue of Mrs Brown’s Boys). This is not surprising as the show’s creator, writer and star is Danny Mcbride, a black belt in slapstick (from his cult debut, The Foot Fist Way, through Superbad, Pineapple Express and so on). Mcbride, of Ulster Catholic stock, plays eldest son, Jesse Gemstone, who covets the top dog position of his old man, Eli (John Goodman). He dresses like Elvis, lives in gilded luxury with his trophy wife and shiny kids and loves himself.
Jesse’s younger brother Kelvin (Adam Devine), whose best friend is a reformed Satanist, believes he too is bound for televangelical glory. These squabbling siblings in turn look down on their sister, Judy (Edi Paterson), sidelined from the family ‘business’ by a father whose attention she craves. To this mix, add Baby Billy (or Uncle Baby Billy) the most obvious snake oil merchant, if only because he hasn’t evolved like the others. So when Jesse is being blackmailed by a gang demanding $1 million dollars (or else the video with the hookers and drugs will be unleashed), some smell blood.
The comedy here is broad, dark and dirty. The set-up suggests Succession (the ghastly siblings ruled by an iron-fisted patriarch) but the family backbiting and stabbing has more in common with the antics of the Three Stooges, Schitt’s Creek or Arrested Development. The Gemstones fly the world in their holy trinity of private jets (called The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost), baptising the masses (there’s a marathon conversion in a swimming pool in China) before retreating to their gated compound with its palatial mansions (one for each family member) and a Christian-themed fun park.
Mcbride himself has said that the truth is even weirder than his fiction, recalling a video that went viral while they were making season one, which had “two pastors talking about how God wanted them to have private jets because he didn’t want them riding in those tubes with all the demons.” The demons in the Righteous Gemstones dress in leather, listen to metal music and enjoy a good orgy. The good guys are not much different, even if the finale of season one makes the Gemstones more righteous than they deserve to be. However, the Second Coming, as season 2 is being tagged, promises more mickey taking. Prepare to be converted.