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.
In typically Lindelofian fashion, the path to this hard-won pearl of enlightenment can be long, circuitous, inscrutable, fleetingly transcendent and often dumb (in the good, deliberate way, and in the less-good, tiresome way). Mrs Davis sends Simone on a quest to locate the Holy Grail in exchange for the program’s volitive self-destruction, the mission’s many detours sometimes bogged down by non sequiturs a mite too pleased with their own random cleverness. A heist to retrieve a diving suit owned by Simone’s late father (David Arquette) from the secret lair of her draconian mother (Elizabeth Marvel) makes for suspenseful, captivating television; an hourlong exposition dump concerning her entwined fate with ex Wiley (Jake McDorman), a fateful liver transplant and a conspiracy in the form of a sneaker advertising campaign, less so. The jokes written into dialogue rather than left as big structural ironies fall flat about as often as they don’t, their teen-boy tonality – lots of four-letter words incredulously repeated – a possible reflection of Hernandez’s credits on The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon.
The show loosens up enough to poke fun at its own convolutions, the characters themselves somewhat lost on how eight hours’ worth of plot points connect to each other. That’s where the faith comes in; even when things don’t make strict sense, they foggily cohere into ideas that do. There’s an earnest spirit of searching inquiry in Simone’s intimate negotiations with Christ and the unseen, capricious God he refers to as “the Boss”, her steadfast devoutness tempered by the testing of doubt. She charts a hard-fought middle path through Christian orthodoxy, emphasizing individualism and choice along with trust in a benevolent higher authority. The sensual, tender exchanges between Simone and “JC”, among the show’s most poignant, convey the profound nourishment of the soul that the true believer gets from the power to which they surrender.
The pure God-fearing sincerity of Simone’s arc casts a harsh light on the constant counterplotting that checks in with a brick-headed squadron of “resistance fighters” scheming to take down Mrs Davis. They’re led by JQ (Chris Diamantopoulos doing Crocodile Dundee), a thong-clad commando caricature who seems to have barged in from a different, broader show. He and his flunkies repeatedly fumble their way across Simone and Wiley’s path, each run-in a reminder of the drastic gulf between the writing’s comedic strengths and weaknesses. Cheeky touches of sacrilege like a rodeo competition featuring the Jeza-Bull go down far easier than a hammered-into-the-ground gag about an extension bar called The Constipator. The combination of high rapture and low humor should gel with the overall mode of absurdity, but the latter side of that duality lacks inspiration in its doofusery.
The streaming format turns out to be a felicitous fit for Lindelof’s mystery-box storytelling style; having the first four episodes available at once helps to cut through the inkling that we’re being strung along from week to week by withheld information, a sensation that can nag at the more opaquely confounding moments. Much like that God he’s so fond of, Lindelof wants following him to be doable if challenging, and frequently rewarding. Though in that same respect, the mysterious ways in which he works can be just as frustrating.
Mrs Davis begins on Peacock on 20 April with a UK date to be announced
