We finally finished (a couple of months after the fact) AMC’s TV adaptation of Garth Ennis’ comic book series, Preacher.
Long story short, the 4-season adaptation is a bit of a hot mess, full of many great moments (quite a few of them, but by no means all, lifted or adapted from the original), but as a coherent story it suffers even more than the original.
Ennis wrote an odd but moving (and arguably insightful) paean to America, using hyperbolic sex and violence and iconoclastic religion to provide a old-style Western romance in modern clothing. Written in 3-6 issue arcs (to allow for trade paperback collection), the tale sometimes felt fragmented, but still progressed along narrative about Jesse Custer, his lethal girlfriend Tulip, and their vampiric and right bastard friend Cassidy.
Seth Rogan (Executive Producer) and company faced an insane challenge to mirror the scope and over-the-topness of the original, coupled with, well, the need to maintain a budget (which, for example, dictated keeping kinda-sorta to a single setting per season).
The result a show that felt like a lot of great parts, cut-and-pasted together — plotlines that meandered, events and narratives that seemed locked into a given season without following through (or following through only weakly) in subsequent seasons, characters that came and went or faded in and out, just …
Well, it didn’t keep me from enjoying what I was watching. The music/sound, the cinematography, and, in particular, the actors were all great. Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, and Joe Gilgun owned the roles of Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy (and kudos to Negga who genuinely made me forget the comic book Tulip was a blond white woman). Graham McTavish as the Saint of Killers, Pip Torrens as Starr, and (massive makeup-sympathy shout-out to) Ian Colletti as Eugene … the casting was all just excellent.
The parts were solid, but the whole … well, in the end, it was never quite clear what the TV series Preacher was about. The perils of absolute power, the dangers of hubris, the negligence (if not malignity) of God, the perversity of the universe, the power of friendship … there’s a palpable effort to make it all seem coherent and meaningful in the last episode, drawing in bits from the original (and some great scenes), but by then it’s too late.
Which is a reason why, though I’ve read the graphic novel series a half-dozen times, I won’t be re-watching the TV series any time soon. It was a fine experience while it lasted, and on an episode-by-episode basis, full of talent and imagination, but it never quite made it as a coherent story.
A tip of the hat, though. I’d have considered the series unmakeable. That we got something as good as this should be considered a triumph for the company. I wish it had been better, but I can imagine so many ways it could have been worse.
One added comment here, as I did a bit more digging around into the series and read some commentary, is that while the principals did own their parts, those parts were themselves changed for somewhat the worse by both structural issues and, I think, creative decisions by the writers/producers.
Jesse suffers the most for this. In the comics, Jesse is flawed, but definitely a hero. He is pursuing ideals, and they are largely admirable ones, even if he doesn’t always live up to them. When he uses Genesis, it tends to be when pushed to the limit, and even if (esp. early on) it’s not always the wisest move, he eventually comes to realize that using it for trivial ends is not good. He becomes trustworthy with its power, both from fear of becoming to reliant upon it and because to be otherwise weakens his moral case against God not doing right by His creation.
Jesse in the TV series, on the other hand, is kind of a hot mess, someone whose moral center is wavery to begin with and doesn’t strengthen over time. He is much more casually abusive of the power of Genesis, with some truly tragic results. Further, he is so unreliable in his actions that it’s not at all difficult see the argument that, no, he shouldn’t be allowed to continue using it. And his mission seems more to punch God in the snoot for causing him pain, rather than for a higher or broader cause.
We root for Jesse in the book because he’s a good person, even if very rough around the edges. We root for Jesse in the series because, well, he’s got top billing.
In some ways, this is flipped when it comes to Cassidy. In the comics, Cassady is a rascal who hides a profound immaturity and unwillingness to face up to his actions and their consequences. He leaves behind him (as revealed over time) death and destruction of the personal lives of women he takes a liking to, leaving them dead or addicted or otherwise profoundly damaged by not being able to keep up with a vampire. He’s an abuser, not because he is necessarily mean, but because he is weak and irresponsible.
We get almost none of that in the TV series. Maybe a bit with the “child” subplot in Season 2, but as chilling as aspects of that were, Cassidy largely comes out of it looking pretty decent. Cassidy’s regularly being tortured and then rescued by Jesse or Tulip also instill sympathy. Cassidy in the TV series is hardly a paragon, but he’s also not the insouciant monster of the comics, robbing us of his redemption arc (though giving him a nice, subtle wrap-up in the epilog).
One final note. I just finished (well, nearly, but close enough to draw the conclusion) the comic series in a TPB re-read, and, compared to the series, it’s far more coherent and purposeful. Hardly without flaws, or things that haven’t aged well, or things that weren’t problematic even at the time, but there’s a real story there, for Jesse and Cassidy and Starr and the Saint, and even Tulip and Arseface.
The TV show, by comparison, just keeps throwing crazy stuff at our heroes, who scramble mightily and imperfectly to overcome it before things get zanier. In the end, despite some efforts to reach some sort of conclusion in the 4th Season, not much seems to make any sense or have changed stuff for our characters since the first scene, except Jesse and Tulip have finally found each other and stuck with each other for the rest of their lives, and Eugene went on to fame and fortune in the music industry. Yay?
Again, that’s not to say that the TV series wasn’t a hell of a fun time to watch. But it was more spectacle and “Hey, what if this thing happened next?” than a story that will last and be re-experienced. And that’s kind of a shame.