The Righteous Gemstones’ final season explores redemption and salvation for the Gemstone family.
If you’re unfamiliar with comedy-drama The Righteous Gemstones (Sky Comedy), think of it like this: Succession, but set in the Deep South in the world of televangelists and Bible hucksters, and with a puerility that verges on the baroque.
John Goodman leads the family of millionaire pastors as widowed patriarch Eli Gemstone, with Adam DeVine, Edi Patterson and show creator Danny McBride as his feckless, squabbling, hyper-immature adult children, Kelvin, Judy and Jesse. The show highlights the hypocrisy and essential ridiculousness of the world of South Carolina megachurches, but it is also soaked in love for the people, the region and, in particular, the music. Rarely has country, bluegrass and gospel been wielded so magnificently.
As this is the fourth and final season, the whole future of the Gemstone clan is up for grabs. Not the question of succession, which has largely been settled – instead, these final episodes are about redemption, absolution and salvation. In short: can the corrupt, Mafia-like Gemstones save their souls?
When we rejoin them, Eli, fed up with the internecine battles, has become a long-haired deadbeat drunk, living on a fishing boat in the Florida Keys. The children need him back for the annual telethon they put on in the name of their late mother, Aimee-Leigh.
