If I told you the basic synopsis of Evil – a priest in training, a lapsed Catholic psychologist, and a Muslim tech contractor are hired by the Catholic Church to assess demon possessions and other supernatural instances – you’d think it was just another broadcast TV procedural. And for its first season, it pretty much was that, with a slight edge. Each week the team would be given a case to look into. Something weird, possibly demonic, would be happening to someone and they were there to figure out if it was really supernatural or something else.
Buy Evil: The Complete Series DVDDavid (Mike Colter) is the true believer, training to become a priest he is ready to believe everything is supernatural. Kristen (Katja Hebers) is the agnostic, a lapsed Catholic who no longer believes in angels or demons or any of that stuff. Ben (Aasif Mandvi) is the atheist, raised a Muslim he now only believes in science.
Similar to The X-Files in its early seasons, Evil plays it fast and loose in its first season as to whether the supernatural exists. As an audience, we will see visions with David and watch a snake-tongued demon harass Kristen while she sleeps, and a myriad of other supernatural events, but before the credits roll, there will be some sort of logical, scientific reason that the characters are seeing such things.
That first season is good. It is very much a broadcast TV procedural. It is episodic and a little predictable but also a lot of fun. Created by Robert and Michelle King, who also created The Good Wife and The Good Life, two lawyer-y procedurals that played with the genre in interesting and entertaining ways, Evil similarly mucks about with what a network procedural can be.
But then a funny thing happened. CBS dropped Evil from its lineup, giving it wholly over to its streaming service Paramount+ and then things got weird in the best possible ways. Gone was any pretense that the supernatural didn’t exist. Leland Townsend (Michael Emmerson clearly having so much fun) the series’ central antagonist works for an evil corporation with literal demons working in middle management. David begins working with a secret Vatican society ominously known as the Entity. They push his psychic visions to the breaking point. Every week some new demon, angel, or freaky creature comes onto the scene wreaking insane (and insanely hilarious) havoc.
The later seasons maintain their case-of-the-week structure, but the move to Parmount+ gives them the freedom to do anything the writers could think of, no matter how crazy. It also frees them from the censorship that came with a show airing on broadcast television. The series never goes full HBO on us; it remains wholly in PG-13 territory (well, maybe the frequent f-bombs would give it an R-rating, but the sex is minimal and the violence is mostly cartoonish). Where the series excels is in its ability to come up with the weirdest, goofiest stuff, and still keep it grounded with some good character moments and phenomenal acting by the three leads.
Kristen is the lead character and we spend the most time with her outside of the assessments. She has four daughters, whose high energy and overlapping dialogue give the series its best and warmest running gags, and a husband. For the first season, he’s mostly off-screen, living as a mountain-climbing teacher in the Himalayas (Kristen was a climber as well before she had kids). Eventually, he comes home but is being mind-controlled by Leland. Kristen’s mom Sheryl (Christine Lahti) is also in Leland’s sway, but voluntarily. She’s down with worshiping the Devil if he can maintain her youthful good looks.
We still get plenty of facetime with the other two leads. David eventually becomes a full priest and spends more and more time with the Entity. We also spend time with him inside the church talking to other priests and Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin), a tough, no-nonsense nun who can see demons that no one else can see (giving us numerous humorous moments where she’s chasing one with various household items while others look on with bemusement).
Ben gets a lesser amount of screentime than the other two, but he does take advice from his sister, and in Season 4, he begins being taunted by his own demon. His technically minded brain keeps him experimenting with various ways to prove that it isn’t real.
These well-drawn characters keep the show’s wilder moments from veering the series off a cliff. The actors’ performances anchor us into the story even as some of the things happening inside it are absolutely bonkers.
I will say that binge-watching it as I did to prepare for this review does tend to wear you down. There are just so many exorcisms you can watch before wanting something different. But I had been watching the series before getting this DVD set and in smaller doses I always loved it. So maybe take it slow and savor its many pleasures.
Inexplicably, Evil: The Complete Series is only available in the standard DVD format and in a cheap case at that. Each individual season has its own Blu-ray release so the only reason I can think of this coming out in DVD only is that it was cheap to produce and they wanted a fast way to make a buck with the entire series. Extras include a couple of short making-of features and various deleted and/or extended scenes.
Evil is a great series and well worth your time. This collection is fine if you just want a way to watch the entire thing without having to subscribe to a subscription service, but true physical media collectors would be better served buying up the individual seasons on Blu-ray.
