Lucifer Review

Neil Gaiman's version of this character was a bored aesthete in a slow, literary story. This is a network detective show in which the Devil runs a nightclub, helps a homicide detective solve murders, and asks suspects what they most desire. Judged on its own terms it works, because Tom Ellis is enormously good company, playing an immortal with the emotional development of a teenager, and because the show is unembarrassed by its own format. Lauren German's Chloe Decker is a sturdy straight woman and Lesley-Ann Brandt's Mazikeen is the most interesting person in it.

The structure is the limit. For three seasons on network television it is a murder a week with a family drama about angels running underneath, and the mysteries are the least engaging part of every episode. The move to streaming loosened it up and produced a musical episode and a black and white noir instalment that are both better than anything around them. The final season strains for significance the show never had. Pleasant, repetitive and entirely undemanding.