STALE REVIEW.
By that, I mean that I did not watch this series just recently. I actually watched it this last fall/winter when it was leaving Netflix, but I only finished watching it on the last night that it was available to stream so I didn't think it was fair to you guys to post about it just then. But it's back now, and I really enjoyed it, so I'll hack out a blurb about it. It's a television series about a Catholic priest/exorcist. He's an older man with a white beard, and a badass to demons, but also a really gentle supportive man to humans. I'm not particularly religious, but I found his character really likable, due in no small part to his comparatively liberal opinions (not casting people out because he doesn't agree with their beliefs/practices, just wants everyone to be happy and safe). The powers that be in the Vatican don't like his attitude, and the demons in Hell don't like his success rate... and by the end, the story gets pretty big and heavy. I tend to enjoy supernatural-type stories (video games such as Darksiders and Legacy of Kain; shows like Buffy, Angel and Supernatural; movies like City of Angels and The Deaths Of Ian Stone) so this is right up my alley.
It's not heavy on special effects, but does a good job of building tension and making you fear these demons (it's not like later seasons of Supernatural when the Winchesters take out demons on a near daily basis). There is some gore (the demons do bad things), and you may like it less or more for that reason but I thought it was an appropriate amount and that it seemed to fit the plot of the story. I liked that the events and plot made use of several less common practices/traditions/rules in the Church (like in an exorcism, etc) and I found them very interesting. The practices could conceivably have been made up for the story, but I didn't get that impression. If any of you have studies thoroughly enough to confirm or deny any of this, I'd love to hear your input.
Kind of like Luther, each episode has a conflict all of its own but it also plays into one overarching plot thread of the series. Also it's only 6 episodes, so it's a manageable length to try to watch in a weekend (not as intimidating a prospect as starting the 10 seasons of X-Files). And like so many good series, some of the people that the main character helps in earlier seemingly-one-off episodes return later to help him out. I'm not familiar with any of the faces in the cast, but someone who watches a lot more of the lesser-publicised (in America anyway) British TV mini-series might know them. The picture quality was a bit grainy, and I could deal with that... but my biggest complaint was that some of the multi-lingual dialogue was not subtitled. Most of it was, but it's like they forgot a couple of the scenes. Many of these scenes were in either Latin or Italian (which has similarities to Latin), and though I can't pretend to be anywhere close to fluent, I have enough familiarity to be able to figure out the gist of what they were talking about. But I like to know the nuances and clever subtleties, and that was lost to me. Maybe they fixed that while it was gone from streaming, but I'm not going re-watch it to confirm this. Like I said, I really liked the show: it was interesting, and it was religious but positive and not preachy (unlike Left Behind), which can be a difficult balancing act. If they had just polished it a bit more (sharper picture, complete subtitles) I'd give it a higher rating, but for now it gets 4 stars, or a hair under.
By that, I mean that I did not watch this series just recently. I actually watched it this last fall/winter when it was leaving Netflix, but I only finished watching it on the last night that it was available to stream so I didn't think it was fair to you guys to post about it just then. But it's back now, and I really enjoyed it, so I'll hack out a blurb about it. It's a television series about a Catholic priest/exorcist. He's an older man with a white beard, and a badass to demons, but also a really gentle supportive man to humans. I'm not particularly religious, but I found his character really likable, due in no small part to his comparatively liberal opinions (not casting people out because he doesn't agree with their beliefs/practices, just wants everyone to be happy and safe). The powers that be in the Vatican don't like his attitude, and the demons in Hell don't like his success rate... and by the end, the story gets pretty big and heavy. I tend to enjoy supernatural-type stories (video games such as Darksiders and Legacy of Kain; shows like Buffy, Angel and Supernatural; movies like City of Angels and The Deaths Of Ian Stone) so this is right up my alley.It's not heavy on special effects, but does a good job of building tension and making you fear these demons (it's not like later seasons of Supernatural when the Winchesters take out demons on a near daily basis). There is some gore (the demons do bad things), and you may like it less or more for that reason but I thought it was an appropriate amount and that it seemed to fit the plot of the story. I liked that the events and plot made use of several less common practices/traditions/rules in the Church (like in an exorcism, etc) and I found them very interesting. The practices could conceivably have been made up for the story, but I didn't get that impression. If any of you have studies thoroughly enough to confirm or deny any of this, I'd love to hear your input.
Kind of like Luther, each episode has a conflict all of its own but it also plays into one overarching plot thread of the series. Also it's only 6 episodes, so it's a manageable length to try to watch in a weekend (not as intimidating a prospect as starting the 10 seasons of X-Files). And like so many good series, some of the people that the main character helps in earlier seemingly-one-off episodes return later to help him out. I'm not familiar with any of the faces in the cast, but someone who watches a lot more of the lesser-publicised (in America anyway) British TV mini-series might know them. The picture quality was a bit grainy, and I could deal with that... but my biggest complaint was that some of the multi-lingual dialogue was not subtitled. Most of it was, but it's like they forgot a couple of the scenes. Many of these scenes were in either Latin or Italian (which has similarities to Latin), and though I can't pretend to be anywhere close to fluent, I have enough familiarity to be able to figure out the gist of what they were talking about. But I like to know the nuances and clever subtleties, and that was lost to me. Maybe they fixed that while it was gone from streaming, but I'm not going re-watch it to confirm this. Like I said, I really liked the show: it was interesting, and it was religious but positive and not preachy (unlike Left Behind), which can be a difficult balancing act. If they had just polished it a bit more (sharper picture, complete subtitles) I'd give it a higher rating, but for now it gets 4 stars, or a hair under.
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