The Righteous Gemstones Review

The joke that sustains four seasons is that the Gemstones genuinely believe. They are greedy, vain, violent and stupid, but nobody in this family is a cynic, and that sincerity is what separates the show from a straightforward attack on prosperity preaching. John Goodman gives it gravity as a widower who has no idea how to speak to his children, and Edi Patterson's Judy is one of the great comic creations of the era, a woman with no filter whatsoever.

Walton Goggins arrives in the first season as a defrocked uncle with a Christian nightclub past and steals every scene he is in. The production is unusually lavish for a comedy, with a full church campus, motorbike stunts and a monster truck. The plotting is the weak link. Each season constructs an elaborate blackmail or conspiracy scheme that exists mainly to deliver set pieces, and the mechanics are frequently forgotten between episodes. Some of the crudity is simply crudity. But the flashback episodes, particularly the ones with a young patriarch, are quietly excellent.