We're enjoying, as a family, AMC's new irreverent (sort of), weird, violent, creepy, and, yes, funny new series, Preacher, based on the Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon comic book series of too-many-years-past.
As I just finished rereading that series [1], and perhaps getting tired of my secretive chortles as new characters get introduced, my wife asked me how the TV series varied from the source material. Given that we're only 3 episodes in, and it's only the first series, it may be premature, but my answer was something like, Imagine you're watching a TV series of "Lord of the Rings," show-run by Joss Whedon, but it's all set in Bree and the Shire, and rather than going on this long, epic quest through Middle-Earth, all the characters, the Fellowship folk and the bad guys and a lot of in-between, are coming to that one locale to hatch their plans. Frodo has and is starting to experiment using the One Ring, people from his past are pulling him in different directions, strangers from weird races are showing up in town with cryptic plots they're hatching (just what do those elves want?), and there's this scruffy, menacing-looking guy in the booth at the back of the Prancing Pony who just keeps smoking his pipe and watching everything that's going on … [2]
Kind of like that. Not that any of the characters are analogs to each other, but it has that profound take something recognizable, majorly reshuffle the plot, recognize the implications of having done so and run with them.
I've read that TV show creators see this season as sort of a prologue to books, but given the extent of the action thus far, that's only partly accurate. They're doing something very cool, very different, yet thematically the same, with characters (well-played by their actors) that feel very closely aligned so far to their comic book versions while still having some significant differences.
If I have one criticism of the show to date, it's that it feels like there's almost too much, especially for a "prologue." Every episode is giving us new character or dozen, with, presumably, the plot lines that go with them, even stuff that doesn't get introduced in the books until waaaaay later on.
But that's tactical, and not founded in actually knowing what they're going to be doing. So far, we're all liking it a lot. The showrunners here — Seth Rogan, et al. — are making something very much their own from the Ennis/Dillon work, and doing it quite well. In fact, possibly, even better in some ways.
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[1] I would not recommend reading the comic, if you haven't before, until the show is wrapped, if only because of spoilers and misleading expectations, even if so much is being seriously tweaked and reshuffled. This is a creative work on its own, and too much comparison between the two is unfair to both
[2] By the way, I would so watch that show. Are you listening, Joss?
Ayyo. That's how boy kids here are getting these weird haircuts.
It's a awesome show. Tulip and Cassidy are fantastic characters