As a Jewish artist’s reverent yet not-quite-credulous meditations on Christian myth, there’s a fascinating theological tension at play in the TV work of Damon Lindelof. Lost and The Leftovers deconstructed the question of the afterlife in the face of definitive proof that it exists, and his miniseries reworking of Watchmen posited the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan as a fallible God figure. He respects the great quandaries of religion enough to take them seriously, though his interrogations of the sacred always include a few doses of sniggering profanity. This balance of skepticism and belief takes intriguing new form in Lindelof and co-creator Tara Hernandez’s new Peacock series Mrs Davis, which constructs a metaphorically pliable deity in a distant cousin of Siri and Alexa.
The artificial intelligence referred to by the unsettlingly personal sobriquet of the title lives in an earbud worn by users in every corner of the globe, with the defiant exception of nun Simone (Betty Gilpin, a commanding cowgirlish presence in her cornflower habit). Raised by magicians, married to Jesus Christ in a capacity made quite literal by surreal interludes taking place at His celestial falafel restaurant, she doesn’t trust the technological panopticon bent on flushing all the mystique from the world. Lindelof and Hernandez’s amply founded impulses toward Luddism don’t come off as fogeyish, however, channeled as they are toward a grander parable about the paramount importance of cultivating a critical relationship with the Almighty. The showrunners are less preoccupied with smartphones than the lockstep mentality our gadgets can foster, a concern easily translated to the difference between the devout and the blindly zealous.
