Preacher

Having an overarching goal and a shortened list of distractions has left the humans and immortal beings in his inner circle with the perfect antidote to a world where God is missing and an honest mistake can trap a teenager in Hell. There are plenty of miles on the odometer still left to travel, but few shows have done a better job tidying up the roadmap.

Season 2 opened with the preacher and his friends on a road trip, figuratively and literally in search of God, who’s gone missing. As metaphor and as entertainment, it’s everything you look for in a summer diversion.

Life is cheap in Preacher, and the action is as mordantly hilarious as the humor is obscene. The soundtrack, too, is utilized to highly ironic effect.

It feels more like, well, a TV show--one that better understands its strengths and its weaknesses, and that is actually going somewhere, narratively as well as physically, after being stuck in an uninteresting place for too long.

Nothing is as satisfying as a show in the confidence of its prime, and that’s where season 2 finds Preacher: laser-focused on the characters that we care about and teasing a ridiculously tantalizing treat on the road ahead.

Preacher does occasionally falter, usually when shifting its gaze away from the three main characters for too long. Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy aren't multidimensional, but the actors share a sparkling chemistry that imbues their characters' sarcastic salvos with a magnetic familiarity.

It's heavily serialized and yet the hours are pleasantly episodic, bridged by cliffhangers. It feels like a TV series, which isn't always how the show felt last year. Preacher also feels visually smoother.