The series explores a range of comedy events in a television family with a long tradition of deviation. They face further distractions, greed and philanthropy, as they struggle through numerous threats to their famous religious empire. Over time, this family continues to spread the good word through which they established their permanent and ideal empire.
Putting characters first is rarely a bad idea with ongoing TV series, and McBride ensures viewers will want to keep coming back just to see more of what this cast can do.
The show already feels like McBride's best work, with the needle threading the tiny spaces he has to operate inside to make a show about terrible people work. Your mileage may vary, though. And that's fine.
McBride and Hill's comedies sometimes take a while to land on the right tone, and maybe that will be the case with this one, too. But for now, it's a show about a spiritually bankrupt family that hasn't quite found its own soul.
This is a decent show that could quickly become good or even great. All the pieces are there, even if McBride seems to be struggling at the beginning to put them together into one convincing sermon.
Gemstones operates at a much grander scale than Vice Principals' shabby high school or Eastbound's minor league baseball diamond. And scale means opportunity.
As with [Danny] McBride's previous HBO shows, Gemstones delicately balances the ridiculous and extreme with surprisingly subtle character moments that keeps the show from drifting too far away from legitimate emotion and humanity.
The Righteous Gemstones is uneven but solid and engaging; I'm already dying to know what happens next. In a way, it's reflective of the megachurches it skewers: It's so easy to find yourself dazzled and buy into it completely.