It has a Big Bad — Leland Townsend, a primly malevolent nemesis played with a marvelous comic spitefulness by Michael Emerson — whose ratio of psychopathy versus supernatural dominion is teasingly unspecified.
When you’ve got the end of the world as we know it on one side of your narrative equation, it exerts a certain pressure, and maintaining a show’s balance can be tricky, especially when your method tends toward cerebral and high-comic stylization.
Join Times theater reporter Michael Paulson in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, catch a performance from Shakespeare in the Park and more as we explore signs of hope in a changed city.
The early episodes of Season 2 have some of the same treading-water feeling, as if the show doesn’t want to dial up the intensity too early.
The Kings play to their strengths, deftly inserting elements of workplace comedy and bureaucratic satire, with Peter Scolari and Dylan Baker providing pleasure as priests who are as obsessed with public relations as any politician or corporate executive.
The process of exorcism is subtly and amusingly infused with the clichés of the addiction-recovery drama, as a wealthy person who claims to be possessed is provided with the equivalents of a sponsor and a therapy group.
Leaving network TV has allowed, so far, for a sparing use of strong language and a tiny bit of nudity.