I enjoyed this show enough that I wound up binging all ten episodes in a single day.
I almost ditched it with in the first 20 minutes because I thought the show was going to be all preachy and Holier than Thou. But it wound up not being that at all.
The show basically keeps you wondering what he is. Is he really the Messiah? Is he a terrorist? The anti-Christ?
The show does a really good job of keeping you guessing the whole time.
Do they tell you at the end? Is the answer definitive?
And does it make sense?
I don’t want to start something like this and it end up being a waste of time.
The show does end on a major cliffhanger. So questions are left unanswered (til season 2 anyway). But one major question does get answered (To me anyway, and to others that have reviewed the show).
There are also lots of side plots that are interesting and get resolved. Lots of character growth with various players that was interesting to watch.
Interesting. When I saw the series listed, I looked for reviews and the first I saw was this, which is pretty much diametricly opposed to your reaction.
you said it doesn’t come across as “holier than though” insane religious dribblings, but how “preachy” is it, does it lean more towards the secular, or religious side?
if it takes a more impartial, secular approach, I might give it a go, but if it’s even slightly preachy or glurgy, sorry, hard pass…
if it’s too preachy, it’ll be hard to resist the urge to riff on it Rifftrax/MST3K style…
I’m not sure I want to be kept guessing. I’d like a show or movie that takes it head on. I don’t want to see “Is he the messiah? Is he a fake?” We have that now, millions of people treating certain people as ordained by God himself, facts be damned. A TV show of that would just be more of the same.
I would like to see that the character really is unquestionably supernatural (God or devil, I don’t care) and see how the world deals with it.
But the industry will never make that. Sure they’ll make Left Behind, but that’s preaching to the choir, small audience. The closest analogy would be the 1991 film The Rapture, which ended (spoilers!) with the actual titular event.
I’d love to see a show where Christ really returns, and spends his days walking around and preaching. But he can’t be arrested, or killed, because you know, the whole son of God thing. He asks for nothing, he needs nothing, he just preaches. It would be fun to see how governments and religions react to something they can’t control and can’t stop. But that kind of show is just too likely to offend…everybody.
The only “religious” show I’ve enjoyed so far is “Lucifer” but that’s mainly for how much fun the lead actor playing Luci is having with his role, yes he chews the scenery, has over the top angsty moments about how “dad” is tormenting him, his battle with the state of his wings, his relationship with his police officer partner, but it’s clearly designed as a “dramedy”
one point Luci insists on making numerous times is that even though he technically is “The Devil”, he’s not actually a “bad guy”, because he’s punishing evil souls, none of the evildoers he encounters has been forced to do evil, it’s all been under their own free will
…but it’s mainly for his dark humor and tendency to chew the scenery, he steals every scene he’s in (but if he’s the protagonist, is it really “stealing” the scene?), it’s hammy, and cheesy, but it does have a philosophical core at it’s heart
I enjoy that the would-be Messiah is obviously Middle Eastern and hangs out with Muslims. So that in itself would indicate it’s not your normal Evangelical fare. I’ll have to watch it this weekend.
If it helps, I’m a hardcore atheist, and still enjoyed it. There are a couple of moments when the “messiah” preaches his “let he who is with out sin cast the first stone” moments. And everyone in the audience gets all wide eyed and gaped mouth. But even then you don’t know if he’s being sincere or manipulative.
Interesting premise, but so far, they keep up with the whole “Is He?/Is He Not?” game throughout.
Issues of Faith, conscience, duty, sacrifice, etc., are touched upon lightly, likely so as not to offend anyone by being too unsubtle.
I felt it had pacing issues. A couple of sub-plots could’ve been dumped, 2, maybe three episodes cut, to bring it all together a bit better.
There was an ITV program called The Second Coming that sort of did what you describe.
Thanks. I’ll look for it.
I spent the entire day watching this show start to finish. I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t GREAT but it kept me so intrigued I needed to know how it ended.
I think I would have like it to have ended about 3 minutes before it actually did. If you’ve seen the end you know what I mean. But I mean that was my hope for the ending. Apparently it’s set up so there will be more to the story.
Just Asking have you seen The Man From Earth?
The Man from Earth - Movie Trailer - YouTube this is the trailer for Man From Earth
I’m not sure there’s an ‘impartial’ view. I think ‘impartial, secular’ is as big an oxymoron as ‘impartial, Christian’ or ‘impartial, other religion religion’ or ‘impartial brand new religion’ view of the general question of (God derived, supernatural oriented) Messiah(s), either Jesus or a different one strictly limited to a TV show.
I haven’t watched the show yet, I might or might not. But the fact it hasn’t caused an internet/media uproar too big to have missed, already told me it must not clearly present the eponymous Messiah as ‘real’. I take it that you would be annoyed by that (‘religious dribblings’) but devout Christians might be just as annoyed at a non-Jesus ‘real’ Messiah (I guess many or most Western TV shows contain stuff odious to devout Muslims but most typically ignore it if it’s not directly dealing with Islam, etc for other religious people). A presentation of the Messiah as clearly fake from the get go might or might not cause an uproar depending on the details of the script, but I’d assumed ‘relentlessly ambiguous’ was most likely. OP and other posts just confirm it.
I watched it, and thought that many themes are played stereotypically, which also lend to the charlatan theory, but there’s enough that seems supernatural that you wonder…maybe?
I wouldn’t call the ending a cliffhanger, just unresolved questions. The producers want the show picked up for a second season, you can’t blame them.
Okay, I’ve finished episode 6 and I am so disgusted I don’t know if I’ll finish the series. The premise was intriguing and, while not flawless, I thought that the show was handling the premise well. I was really hoping that there would be no supernatural events – part of Christianity is having faith in the unseen. A messiah should not have to prove himself by walking on water, etc.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Much of the action takes place in the town of Dilley, Texas. Dilley is a real place located on Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Laredo. It is not nearly as small as portrayed in the show. It is also located on INTERSTATE 35. I-35 is the “Main Street” of Texas. It is an EXTREMELY busy freeway that runs from Mexico to Canada right through the heart of the country. In an earlier episode, we see a teen attempting to run away from her home in Dilley. She is walking along a lonely two-lane highway. No rebellious teen is going to do that when there is a freeway right at hand with hundreds of thousands of vehicles every day.
But, whatever. Maybe she isn’t the brightest bulb in the box.
In episode 6, everyone picks up and leaves Dilley. Just outside of town, they come to a sign that shows the mileage to Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Now, if you’re like the writers on this show and unfamiliar with Texas geography, those three cities form a triangle. Dilley lies outside that triangle. One would be hard pressed to find a sign that shows all three of those cities. Any of two of them would be very common, but not all three.
This odd sign is at a T-intersection. Our driver has to decide which way to go on this two-lane highway identified as I-35 by signs. Oh, and his choices are EAST 35 and WEST 35. Oh for goodness’ sake. I-35 is a freeway, not a two-lane road. Two of the three cities on the green sign are NORTH of Dilley and the other is roughly NORTHEAST. And, Interstate 35, as can be told just by its number, is a NORTH/SOUTH highway. I mean, come on!
So, our heroes leave Dilley sometime in the daytime. It isn’t dawn. The sun is high in the sky. TV news reporters breathlessly report that the caravan is on I-35 entering Arkansas. Of course, I-35 goes nowhere near Arkansas. Not even close. If I were going to Arkansas from Dilley, I would leave I-35 in San Antonio and choose any of many routes toward East Texas, ultimately ending up on I-40.
But, in spite of taking a highway that does not go even anywhere near Arkansas, our folks enter the Land of Clinton in broad daylight. Ain’t no way. Texas is big. No, Texas is BIG. If you’re leaving Dilley in the daytime and heading any direction but south, it will be dark before you reach another state. Maybe you could make Louisiana by dusk if you left before lunch, but no way are you making Arkansas. There is no freeway (yet) that goes from Central or South Texas to Texarkana. I-69 is on the way, but decades from being completed.
At this point, you may wonder why I am going on about this. The creators of this show chose a real Texas town for their setting. Texas has millions of people and millions more have visited. Dilley is not in the middle of nowhere. Maps are commonly and easily available. They could have told the same exact story using directions and road signs that made sense. I cannot be the only viewer that was taken out of the story by these horrendous errors. And I could go on for pages more about the simple geographical errors. Why not choose a fictitious town in East Texas? That would have put them closer to where they wanted the story to move geographically and the religious fundamentalism of East Texas would be more ripe for the story they’re telling.
Such lazy story-telling, for me, calls into question EVERYTHING in the show. I don’t need this program to teach me about geography, but I would like to have faith that the story they want to tell will make some sort of sense. This nonsense in Texas makes me fear that the creators of this program don’t care one whit about making sense.
Now, you listen here! He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy!
I started it and found it interesting. Then I saw Roma Downey was involved and kind of lost interest.