“Humanising Hitler”

Preacher: Season Two

Network AMC (US), Lightbox (NZ)

Release Date 25 June – 11 September 2017

Episodes 13

Binge time 9 hrs 40 mins

Preacher was off to a promising start, leaving the boring town of Annville behind them and onto a big road trip to find God. That road trip ended prematurely in episode three when our trio arrived in New Orleans and stayed there for the rest of the season.

Based on the graphic novel by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher is all about the search for God when he up and leaves his post. The series is developed by Sam Catlin, and filmmaking duo Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (This is the End, The Interview). This season our main players are Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun), the Irish vampire, Jesse (Dominic Cooper), the preacher with the almighty word of God (literally), and Tulip (Ruth Negga), the no-nonsense action hero.

Halfway through the season, we’re finally introduced to one of the big bads in the comics, Herr Starr (Pip Torrens), member of the secret religious organisation, The Grail. We finally find Eugene (Ian Colletti) in Hell where Jesse sent him with “the word”. Adolf Hitler even makes an appearance, and Preacher doe the impossible and humanises Hitler. That’s right, the one man that always comes to mind when you think of who would be down there in Hell, the embodiment of hatred and evil. He is a bit of a dweeb, and at first, I hated that the show made me feel sorry for Hitler, but in the end admired their tenacity to create a character so different from his real-life counterpart.

The Hell and Grail locations help offset the mostly stale plot in New Orleans. The dark (and sometimes gory) humour continues throughout and there are attempts at going emotionally deep with our trio, but end up falling flat (Tulip and her PTSD, and Jesse and his failure). Only Denis and Cassidy’s unusual relationship ends up really going places.

The trio is holed up in New Orleans, again waiting around—god knows why—and wastes this interesting locale spending most of their time in a grotty apartment with an elderly Frenchman. That being said there’s still some good stuff, here including more of The Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish) and his relentless badassery.

To top it all off we’re teased about Jesse’s past and his relation to some not very nice people, which is shown early on in the comics, with their faces obscured in the flashbacks. My guess is to make casting easier for next season.

Preacher’s second outing is an improvement on the first, but our characters really need something else to do. Even in New Orleans, our heroes are still twiddling their thumbs.