Netflix's Messiah Season 1 TV Show Review

What if God was one of us...

by Casimir Harlow

Netflix's Messiah Season 1 Review

Netflix's mystery drama Messiah has the CIA desperately try to debunk the seeming Second Coming, positing some interesting ideas but ultimately not enough depth.

Credit to Netflix for picking up a largely unplaceable - and almost impossible to categorise - show, but that's arguably Messiah's biggest sin, peddling authentic Hebrew and Arabic tongues; attempting to posit a genuine What If...? scenario concerning a (potentially false) prophet who mysteriously lands in the Middle East, but not really knowing what to do with its tale of lost souls, faith and faithless, impossible cures and inexplicable powers, primarily because it's all wrapped up in an odd multi-viewpoint narrative involving investigations from Intelligence Services from around the globe (prominently, the CIA), as if gifting it some legitimacy as a political conspiracy thriller.

 Arguably Messiah's biggest sin is not really knowing what to do with its tale

After a man appears in the desert, wiping out ISIL with a storm and preaching of living in a world without borders as he leads the oppressed to another land, Intelligence communities around the world rally to figure out what his agenda is and religious communities gather to wonder how they can help, follow, or utilise his appearance, and a disparate group of people 'touched' by him come together, inexplicably drawn to his magnetic personality and incisive thoughts. Is he really a second hope, or just a walking hoax, and even if he is the real deal, can modern society even process what to do with that?

Netflix's Messiah Season 1

Messiah might have been better handled on a smaller scale, perhaps in a fashion reframing the more classically good vs. evil tale of HBO's ill-fated Carnivale, rather than attempting to go the conspiracy route. There's something to be said for an elegiac approach, irrespective of your religious affiliations or lack thereof, to give the subject matter better weight and more majesty - sure, the CIA conspiracy angle could be injected into that, but a small-scale approach to a random stranger who starts to preach to a group of lost souls and, over the course of a few episodes - perhaps even the first season - hints at perhaps being more than just another preacher, and maybe indeed The One... now, this could have been special.

Instead, Messiah jumps right into apocalyptic displays of Old Testament magics, wiping out terrorism with a single storm, impossibly jumping from continent to continent to spread his message, and leaving little doubt as to just who this individual is (at least in the sense that he's clearly not just a man) - making the quest of the Intelligence community to debunk the 'false' prophet ultimately a waste of the viewer's time. It's a blunt force approach to storytelling that could have done with more mystery - indeed the show is undeniably at its best in the small confrontations between a captured prophet and his would-be interrogator(s), whom he ultimately has the advantage over due to his ability to see within the souls of the people around him.

 A blunt force approach to storytelling that could have done with more mystery

Fans of Michelle Monaghan may have wondered what she's been doing over the last 14 years, between Mission: Impossible cameos - after 2006's Mission: Impossible III, 2007's Gone Baby Gone and 2008's Eagle Eye, she should have been on the road to a lot more than a supporting role in Jamie Foxx's practically straight-to-DVD actioner Sleepless. She's had much more success on the small screen, however, whether it's in the untoppable first season of True Detective or the also religiously themed The Path, and attempts to brings some order to Messiah, even if the plethora of core characters don't always leave her room to breathe. Tomer Sisley's much more interesting 'interrogator' similarly suffers under this, with lots of tragic, haunting ideas to explore, but eminently more focus on just plotting out the slow motions of large congregations of people. A few supporting faces try to stand out in the crowd - John Ortiz (Fast & Furious), Phillip Baker Hall (Hard Eight), Beau Bridges (Goliath), and Dermot Mulroney (Homecoming) - but the focus is really on Mehdi Dehbi's 'messiah', a pretty, charming protagonist whose gestures and 'walking' are much less interesting than his conversations.

Clearly, Messiah would have been much more interesting had it refocussed its efforts on the more personal chats between the characters - which is the absolute highlight - rather than go for what is just another padded-out Netflix 10-episode salvo (there's a much more efficient 6-episode story in here), taking an interesting premise but ultimately stretching it to breaking point. With an abortive conspiracy drawn out over the entire series, the questions of what society would actually do if faced with a genuine prophet come across as much more intriguing from a theological standpoint, but are largely drowned out in all the supposed 'thrills' of a mystery that simply isn't that mysterious.


Scores

Verdict

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6

6
AVForumsSCORE
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10

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