Ray Wise's Satan (right) seems a decent enough chap. Photgraph: Channel 4
He's best known as the anti-king of screwball slackerdom, but director Kevin Smith has also long had a thing for the celestial. 1999's Dogma saw him cast Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as two fallen angels trying to return to a heaven where God took the form of Canadian caterwauler Alanis Morissette. And it's long been whispered he'll adapt Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's seminally blasphemous comic Preacher - where a sleazy Reverend, a gun-toting heroine and an alcoholic vampire search America for a selfish God who's abandoned heaven.
Preacher remains a pipe dream for now (and I'd like to see the US network who'd dare to show it), but for now we do have Reaper, with Smith acting as creative consultant and also directing the pilot. Starting last night on E4, it's the latest breakout American hit.
Reaper is pure Smith in that everything from the intro music (Devil's Haircut by Beck) to the faintly outmoded slacker concept itself looks like it's been beamed straight in from the 90s (so yes, I was in my comfort zone). But what separates Reaper from Mallrats or Chasing Amy is the presence of The Devil himself. Actually, Ray Wise's Satan seems a decent enough chap; a sharp-suited Wall Street type with a thing for hockey and wisecracks, more concerned with celestial justice than murder or damnation. He bought our hero's soul from his parents before he was born. In return, Sam must spend his life acting as the Devil's bounty hunter, returning escaped souls to hell.
This could turn out to be Reaper's masterstroke. The Chosen One subgenre is dominant in US cult shows right now: tracing back to Buffy and living on through Heroes and Bionic Woman. We want our heroes to be ordinary types who find themselves with a superpower or a special destiny that means they have to overcome their human weakness to save the world, or at least a part of it. And that's an ideal fit with the slacker genre for which Smith is famous. All of Smith's heroes start out as perma-stoned, ineffectual jackasses before somehow achieving redemption and usually getting the girl.
Sam and his gross-out buddy Bert are direct descendents of Randal and Dante in Clerks right down to the home repair superstore where they do their McJobs. Sure they're agents of the devil but their mission of returning bad folks to the bad place sees them fulfil their potential and make the world a nicer place.
Pilots are notoriously shaky but last night's got through all the exposition in way smoother style than the messy Bionic Woman. With the minimum of fuss we were right into Sam and Bert's mission, an inspired Ghostbusters skit involving a Dirt Devil and a malevolent pyromaniac. It remains to be seen whether they can keep the format fresh, but Gareth McLean called it "the best import of the year so far" and "possibly the new Buffy."
Reports from Stateside suggest that it may be eclipsed by the similarly premised Chuck, where a slackergeek who gets the world's greatest spy secrets embedded into his brain. But Reaper is worth sticking with for now. But it's probably worth catching on E4+1, since the homegrown Torchwood - scheduled directly opposite - played another blinder last night for the second week running.
