Adam Devine, Danny McBride and Edi Patterson in The Righteous Gemstones. Photo / Supplied
Adam Devine, Danny McBride and Edi Patterson in The Righteous Gemstones. Photo / Supplied
The Righteous Gemstones’ final season explores redemption and salvation for the Gemstone family.
If you’re unfamiliar with comedy-drama The Righteous Gemstones (Sky Comedy), think of it like this: Succession, but set in the Deep South in the world of televangelists and Bible hucksters, and with a puerility that verges onthe baroque.
John Goodman leads the family of millionaire pastors as widowed patriarch Eli Gemstone, with Adam DeVine, Edi Patterson and show creator Danny McBride as his feckless, squabbling, hyper-immature adult children, Kelvin, Judy and Jesse. The show highlights the hypocrisy and essential ridiculousness of the world of South Carolina megachurches, but it is also soaked in love for the people, the region and, in particular, the music. Rarely has country, bluegrass and gospel been wielded so magnificently.
As this is the fourth and final season, the whole future of the Gemstone clan is up for grabs. Not the question of succession, which has largely been settled – instead, these final episodes are about redemption, absolution and salvation. In short: can the corrupt, Mafia-like Gemstones save their souls?
When we rejoin them, Eli, fed up with the internecine battles, has become a long-haired deadbeat drunk, living on a fishing boat in the Florida Keys. The children need him back for the annual telethon they put on in the name of their late mother, Aimee-Leigh.
They also need him back because they have no idea how to run a megachurch. Jesse’s latest masterplan is the creation of mall-based “Prayer Pods”, while Judy continues to be the overlooked daughter (a la Shiv Roy). Only Kelvin, the youngest, is having any sort of success, via his LGBT church offshoot, Prism. This has him in line for the wonderfully titled Top Christ Following Man of the Year award.
The series gives all its memorable characters – Walton Goggins’s crusty “Uncle” Baby Billy, Tim Baltz’s milksop in-law BJ – a fitting send-off, while The Righteous Gemstones remains the only show that can have you recoiling in horror at the scatological filth one minute, then tearing up the next.
It may even finally get the accolades it deserves, via its virtuoso opening episode, set during the Civil War in 1862 and introducing us to the original Gemstone pastor. It is a sensational episode, light on humour but high on wit, in which Bradley Cooper’s violent drifter inadvertently finds himself the chaplain of a Confederate army unit. The cinematography, music and Cooper’s performance are all outstanding, and if the episode doesn’t have you kneeling at the Gemstone altar, nothing will.
