The Midnight Gospel review: Netflix animated series is a must-watch, with impressive TV writing and a new kind of storytelling

It’s true that the ongoing streaming era has, in ingenious ways, exploited the ‘modes’ in which we consume stories (podcasts while commuting, binge-watching on Friday nights). Writing a screenplay for a streaming show now comes with a specific set of formal features/expectations — the standalone flashback episode devoted to your second-most-important character, the cliffhanger in the penultimate episode and so on. But smart creators have also, occasionally, disrupted that conversation entirely — and given us brand-new modes of storytelling that will certainly become more and more influential in the years ahead. For example, the interactive _Black Mirror: Bandersnatch_ has spawned further choose-your-own-adventure stories — Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt will release a special interactive episode later this month. Animator Pendleton Ward and comedian Duncan Trussell’s new animated Netflix show The Midnight Gospel feels like one of those seminal moments when a new, hybrid kind of storytelling announces its arrival. Basically, Ward (the creative force behind the delightful Adventure Time) has animated excerpts from Trussell’s podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, where the comedian often speaks about spirituality, philosophy, death, the afterlife and other topics in this vein — with an eclectic range of guests. He has created a fictional framework around these podcast episodes, for continuity’s sake — but up until episode six (there are eight episodes in total in the first season), there’s not much by way of continuity, to be honest, and these conversations can be consumed as standalones. [caption id=“attachment_8338751” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from The Midnight Gospel. Image from Twitter mod[/caption] Here’s the premise: Clancy Gilroy (Trussell) is a purple-skinned alien ‘spacecaster’ (video-casting in space, basically) who lives in a dimension referred to as ‘the Chromatic Ribbon’ or just the Ribbon. On this world, there are sophisticated bio-computers that simulate universes — the ‘farmers’ on the Ribbon then harvest these universes for technology. Clancy uses his simulator to interview residents of dying planets for his spacecast (he leaves, of course, just as the planet is about to end). On the cusp of death, these beings have unique insights on mortality, wellness, religion and ethics. For example, the very first episode sees Clancy/Trussell talking to ‘Glasses Man’, the president of a planet called Earth 4-169, even as it’s ravaged by a zombie apocalypse. Glasses Man is voiced by addiction specialist Drew Pinksy (better known as ‘Dr Drew’ from the eponymous VH1 reality show Celebrity Rehab With Dr Drew), and therefore, Trussell and Pinsky talk about the pros and cons of psychedelic drugs, the ways in which they expand our consciousness, and the many myths/half-truths about these drugs that have gained currency in recent years. It’s a lovely conversation, even though it’s a little meandering — and the dissonant visuals in the background become a weirdly effective metaphor for the way important conversations are waylaid by mindless (in this case, literally zombie-like) infighting and vested interests. Similarly, in the second episode, Clancy/Trussell talks to the novelist Anne Lamott, who manifests in the episode as a deer-dog on a ‘Clown World’, where a batch of new robotic clowns is devouring the entire planet. Lamott and Clancy have a thoughtful conversation about accepting death (she tells him about how a large number of terminal cancer patients have, counter-intuitively, often expressed gratitude for their prognoses) even as they are fed through a gigantic sewage system that converts them slowly into meat mush. If all of this sounds like the weird, unclassifiable, slow-paced philosophical things your stoner cousin watches over a joint… well, it is. It is all of that — and it’s some of the most beautiful TV writing seen in recent times. Not everything is smooth sailing though. Sometimes, the visuals overwhelm you, to the extent that you might miss some crucial bits of dialogue. Sometimes it’s the other way around: you’ll be so engrossed in the conversation that piano-playing cats and MC Escher staircases might pass you by entirely (thank God for the pause button, and also creators’ willingness to reward its liberal usage; remember how many pause-and-play visual gags Tuca and Bertie hid in its frames?). At the risk of revealing too much about the final episode, ‘Mouse of Sliver’, I’ll categorically say that it’s a masterpiece, without question one of the most moving standalone TV episodes of the last 4-5 years. In 2013, Trussell’s mother Deneen Fendig, a clinical therapist, died after a long battle with cancer. Amazingly, just weeks before her death, Fendig had the idea to record a conversation about death and moving on with her son. The transcript of that remarkable, bittersweet conversation forms the backbone of ‘Mouse of Sliver’. From the word go, it’s clear that the fourth wall has been broken, she calls Clancy ‘Duncan’ in the very first scene. Even as Fendig and Trussell are going through their heart-to-heart, we see cartoon-Fendig ageing and dying, while cartoon-Duncan is a boy slowly growing up to become a man. After her death, cartoon-Duncan becomes pregnant and gives birth to his own mother, who then ages to become her grown-up self, even as cartoon-Duncan ages and approaches death—thus closing the birth-death-rebirth cycle. It is awe-inspiring, tear-jerking stuff. I cried a lot, as I know anyone who has contemplated the death of a parent (and in case you haven’t noticed, that’s basically everybody right now) will. The Midnight Gospel is the real deal, an absolute must-watch TV show for the discerning viewer — and in this era of hundreds of new releases every week, there really is no higher compliment. The Midnight Gospel is now streaming on Netflix.