Something "Evil" Is Happening to Television

Fittingly, this unsettling event has the popular Paramount+ paranormal chiller Evil at its center. Specifically, the last original episode of this still vital series is scheduled to premiere on Thursday, and then Evil will be gone, having been struck down in its prime, a victim of … well, we can guess, but we can't be sure.

Consider: Right out of the gate, when it began its four-season lifespan, Evil with its merry mix of personal drama, tech wizardry, religious exploration, wild paranormal activity and clever detective work distinguished itself as singularly a distinctive program quite unlike anything that had come before (including but not limited to The X Files, The Night Stalker, Fox's short-lived take on The Exorcist and Peacock's Days of Our Lives whenever Satan comes to town). In this era of endless revivals, reboots, remakes and recycled concepts, shouldn't a show like Evil at best be honored and at least be protected from premature cancellation? It did not benefit from either.

We know its bitter end is indeed premature because series creators Robert and Michelle King and stars Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Michael Emerson and Aasif Mandvi have made no secret of the fact that they would like to continue doing it. Herbers has been especially active on social media which, like streaming TV, is supposed to have some sort of unprecedented clout amid the mass of modern media. Another myth busted.

Speaking of its cast, which is uniformly top-notch from leads to recurring players, I would have liked Evil to stick around not only to continue enjoying the chemistry between Herbers, Colter and Mandvi, whose characters are at the center of everything, but to keep relishing Emerson, who as devilish Leland Townsend delivers a performance as artfully complex and eerily entertaining as the show itself. And then there are the supporting actors, especially Andrea Martin and Christine Lahti, both better known for other work but clearly having the time of their lives here as no-nonsense nun Sister Andrea and opportunistic meddling mother Sheryl Luria, respectively. Martin in fact deserves every award the industry has to offer … but, again, the industry seems to disagree.

Evil is a tough one to explain. The elevator pitch as I imagine it -- it's a thriller laced with peculiar humor in which the Catholic church assembles an unlikely team to investigate and deconstruct inexplicable and mostly horrific events -- doesn't begin to cover it. I have twice included this show in my annual Top 25 Programs of the Year list, and intend to do so again in December, but I have always been the first to admit that I can't always follow what's going on in its deep, dark and twisty narrative. And as I have always noted, that has never been a problem. Since before the pandemic, and while bouncing from CBS to CBS All Access to Paramount+ to (in a sense) Netflix (where seasons one and two have been a big collective hit), Evil has been the best thrill ride on television.

It is even harder to explain why this show is going away, to the degree that anything really goes away these days, when recent and vintage shows live on in streamers' libraries (if you can find them and, more to the point, afford them all). To begin with, there is no denying that the Kings are geniuses and can be trusted to deliver content that pushes the limits of quality programming. (In other words, they make smart TV.) They created The Good Wife, which I fondly recall as an adult drama so timely and sophisticated that it forced broadcast TV to grow the hell up; The Good Wife spin-off The Good Fight, one of the best streaming series on any platform, and one that ran on two (CBS All Access and Paramount+), and most recently Elsbeth, a delightful spin-off of both Wife and Fight which continues that franchise in a whole new way (while bringing it back to CBS, where it all began).

Evil could have continued as it is, or eventually as an anthology style show (maybe with one or more of its characters hitting the road to further save the world). It would certainly improve the content profile of any streamer that might have taken it. But, despite the perpetual promises of modern media, and especially streaming television, it seems that is not to be the case.

I hope I'm wrong. There's still time, isn't there? Evil already belongs in the record books as the only show to date to have run original episodes on a broadcast network (CBS) and two streaming services (CBS All Access and Paramount+) and to have enjoyed further success in replay form on another (Netflix). Critics love it, loyal viewers don't want it to end and new viewers are finding it as you read this. Why must it die?

Many other series have been brought back after cancellation. Wouldn't it be grand if Evil were also to rise from the dead?

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