Preacher

The first episode of Preacher aired last night, for those unaware Preacher is an adaptation of a comic of the same name by Garth Ennis and Matt Dillon, it released in 1994 or thereabouts and immediately put Ennis on the map as a writer.
The comic, and show, tell the story of Jesse Custer, a preacher(duh) who is having trouble finding his faith in a small town in Texas that seems determined to be as horrible as possible in every way.

Then one day he gains the power to tell anyone to do anything, meets a vampire, and gets embroiled in assorted conspiracies involving secret societies, angels, various criminals, Arseface, and others as he goes off to find God himself and give him what for.

At least, that's the comic, only the first line of the above paragraph has happened so far, plus Arseface.

I was a big fan of the comic and while today I think Garth Ennis is kind of a tool and goes too much for rape and gore rather than  actually being creative, Preacher still holds up pretty well.

After viewing the first episode I can say that I am cautiously optimistic. It does diverge from the comic a bit in ways that either become clear rapidly, or don't matter if you haven't read it, and that is fine, I am not a purist really so bring on the changes. I am not sure if I am sold on the actors, Dominic Cooper is our hero, with Joe Gilgun as his buddy Cassidy, they are extremely unattractive in this, and I am not sure why but that seems to matter to me, despite the fact that Ennis and Dillon didn't design them as models or anything in he first place.

Come to think of it, Cooper actually isn't bad, I guess Gilgun is weird looking enough that it sort of takes over. Anyway feelings on looks aside, the both do a solid acting job and are great in the fight scenes.
The person who stole the show while playing a character who could probably be just as entertaining headlining her own, completely unrelated show, is Ruth Negga as Tulip, the preachers ex-girlfriend and apparent super spy, assassin, treasure hunter, or adventurer, I am not sure which yet. She's tons of fun and played very compellingly. Also the character that is likely to make racists and comic book purists, a couple of demographics that overlap surprisingly well, upset.

See, Negga is Irish-Ethiopian and looks like it, while the comic book Tulip is about as white as it is possible for a person to be. This likely will enrage idiots and pleases me to no end. Especially since Custer and Co. tend to be pretty opposed to racists.

Things do not end well for the Klan here.

The pacing has issues I think, over an hour of air time and most of it is spent moping, this is important to show that Jesse is going through a bad spot, but after a while I just kept wondering what Cassidy and Tulip were doing, as they both seemed to enjoy life a fair bit more.

So yeah, looks like it could be fun, was fun for the most part, has a couple of rough spots that I hope they get over but I am hopeful to see a longish running comic book series that isn't from the big two and isn't The Walking Dead, because damn that show is depressingly repetitive.