A blatant piece of opportunistic programming, this lame comedy has the king of pop turning up at the pearly gates to the delight of the seraphim, who have recently voted him top in a poll of the people the angels would most like to see die. Now he's forced to wait in purgatory for a week to discover if he's bound for heaven or hell. The audience vote to decide the result, but this takes place before the show, suggesting the producers have little faith that there will be anyone who cares enough left at the end to cast a vote.
It's not completely hopeless. There's some genuine acting and singing talent on display, but it's predictably studenty stuff, with Jesus appearing as an Aussie surfer dude and Princess Di hosting her own talk show on celestial TV. I did rather enjoy the idea of the atheists forced to take on all the rubbish jobs, with John Lennon condemned to play the grim reaper because of Imagine and Charles Darwin forced to clear out the celestial sewers for eternity.
There's plenty of bad-taste jokes about the recently deceased, from Jade Goody to Pina Bausch (who provides a devised dance to welcome Jackson into the afterlife), and the living are sent up, too. But the satire is so mild that you barely notice it, and the closest that the show gets to being anything other than nice as pie is a send-up of Mariah Carey at the memorial service warbling, and declaring: "Michael not only wanted to touch us, he wanted to touch our children, too." Yes, it really is purgatory.
