TV
Should we skip ‘Midnight Mass’? The Netflix horror-drama series Midnight Mass has the Catholic faith as its focus. But as chris Byrd finds, for Catholic viewers there are problems. (Warning: Contains spoilers)
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IS EXPERIENCES AS AN of these peculiar happenings by commanding a paralysed local teen Leeza, altar boy and recovering althe daughter of Crockett Island’s coholic inform creator Mike mayor, to rise and walk. “God’s gifts are Flanagan’s Midnight Mass. as tangible as the ground beneath our Commendably ambitious but marred feet,” the clergyman observes in the by some highly problematic material, wake of this apparent miracle. the supernatural drama — which is While free of nudity or sexual constreaming on Netflix in seven onetent, Midnight Mass is challenging fare hour episodes — ultimately collapses for other reasons. In addition to the inunder the weight of an absurd conceit. clusion of much bloodletting and a fair Flanagan wrote, directed and exec- A scene from the Netflix series Midnight amount of strong language, the series utive-produced the series, which is also Mass, which is set within a Catholic takes an ambiguous approach in its something of a family affair: Flana- community. Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix treatment of faith. Flanagan initially gan’s wife and frequent collaborator, who has been on pilgrimage in the affirms the value and significance of Kate Siegel, portrays one of show’s Holy Land. Fr Paul’s cover story is that Christian belief among his characters. leads, schoolteacher Erin Greene. Relihe is just filling in for the older priest. Yet, as he reveals their extremism, they gious themes suffuse the series, as inSoon, strange, disconcerting events come across as simple-minded cultists dicated by such chapter headings as upset the isolated, tight-knit popularather than sincere Catholics. “Genesis”, “Proverbs” and “Acts of the Apostles”. This is exemplified in their In the show, Catholics come bizarre, savagely misguided interReleased from prison after a pretation of the words of Jesus, four-year sentence for vehicular across as simple-minded cultists recorded in the Gospel of John, homicide while driving drunk, by which he emphasised the neformer altar server Riley Flynn cessity for his followers to “eat my (played by Zach Gilford) returns to tion. After a storm, for instance, nuflesh and drink my blood”. Since this tiny, fictitious Crockett Island, his merous stray cats are found dead on a teaching serves as part of the foundachildhood home. Fr Paul Hill’s (Hamish Linklater) arrival in the com- beach, the cause of their demise un- tion for the greatest of sacraments, its munity coincides with Riley’s home- known. And a pet dog is fatally poi- sacrilegious misuse will disturb even coming. Unbeknown to his new soned. But not all the mysterious thick-skinned Catholic viewers. congregants, Fr Paul has come to re- events are negative. Thus elderly, Logically flawed as well as lurid, place the parish’s long-serving and homebound Mildred Gunning is grad- Midnight Mass turns out to be a mess.— CNS beloved shepherd, Mgr John Pruitt, ually restored to her youthful self. Fr Paul facilitates the most startling
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