I’m not quite sure how to describe The Midnight Gospel except to say that it is a journey. You know exactly the kind I’m talking about. These eight hallucinogenic explorations into life, love, death, and everything in between are unlike anything else on television. I promise you. One part podcast, one part Daliesque fantasy, this is a series that’s looking to rewire your brain and expand your mind.
What I’m saying is that this is some seriously out-there shit. I watched it stone cold sober and I felt like I was trippin’ balls.
The series begins with very little by way of an introduction. Or even context. We meet Clancy. We know he has a “spacecast” called “The Midnight Gospel” (it’s like a podcast, but one that gets broadcasted into space). We know he has a strange vulva-like device that, when he sticks his head inside, allows him to travel to simulated Earths where he conducts interviews and collects material for his “spacecast”. (No. Really.) We know that he has (at least) one listener. And being the diligent spacecaster he is, we know that he spends most of his days traversing this multiverse of Earths looking for exciting new content for his listener(s).
Got it? Good. Because now you’re pretty much on your own.
Make no mistake, this is the very definition of the term “experimental”. The series was conceived by the incredibly clever Pendleton Ward (all hail Adventure Time!) as a way of taking comedian Duncan Trussell’s long-running podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, and adapting it for a different audience.
The Midnight Gospel extracts audio from the podcast, loosely crafts a story, and juxtaposes it with absurdist animation. Which isn’t to say that the conversations aren’t absurdist themselves. Trussell’s podcast is, after all, a series of deep thoughts about life, death, spirituality, existence, and mind-altering drugs.
Now, I say “juxtapose” because the strange dreamscapes that you see on screen often have very little to do with the conversations that are taking place between the characters. Take the first episode, which excerpts an interview that Trussell did with Dr. Drew Pinsky. Their conversation centres around the ongoing debate regarding drug use and addiction. The animation, however, plays out as a zombie apocalypse in which Clancy and “President” Drew Pinsky are fighting off the undead. If there is a through line between the two, it is subtle to the point of being invisible. But I think that’s the point.
Here, Duncan is Clancy, and Clancy is Duncan. They are refections of one another. But which one is real and which is the avatar? It is a question that becomes all the more difficult to answer when some of the podcast guests begin referring to Clancy as Duncan in the series. At first I thought it was a mistake. Left in because the creators wanted the audience to experience the rough edges of their little experiment. It was only when I reached the final episode, when the series makes its biggest swing, that I realised their intent. It was sentimental. It was emotionally manipulative. But it was also incredibly smart.
Throughout that first episode – and the entire series – I found myself only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time. But because the animation and the conversations are equally as absorbing, each one tugging at your brainstrings and constantly fighting for your attention, it truly is an astonishing viewing experience as your focus begins to trip between the two.
From the dreamlike to the hyper-violent, the fictional space that Ward has created is truly something to behold. Not just the gorgeous Day-Glo visuals, but also the hilarious concepts that accompany them: from cultist rats and deer-dogs, to colourful “wobbles” that subvert reality and giant vaginas that can transport you through time and space.
I also love Duncan Trussell’s voice. It has a comforting quality. It’s boyish timbre often belying a deeper worldliness. His delivery – here and in his podcast – pitched with an abiding sense of curiosity, sways between calm contemplation and the kind of manic, mercurial energy that only ever comes with childhood discovery.
The Midnight Gospel really is the perfect watch for this exact moment when we are, all of us across the world, trapped within the confines of our own homes. Staring at the same spaces, at the same people and faces, with every day blending into the next, and with no end in sight. We are living our first shared human experience since World War II. And while this tragedy plays out differently for each and every one of us, the one common consequence is that it has forced us to stop and take stock. At who we are. At why we are. (That so many of the Earths in Clancy’s multiverse simulator have been destroyed by “operator error” hits home in a way that it likely wouldn’t have a mere three months ago.)
Watching Clancy grow is a profound experience. His quest for meaning proving all the more relevant as we too struggle with the existential questions brought about by this quarantine. And given how every episode, and every conversation within, is about looking at life from a different perspective, I for one find it refreshing that all the answers we seek can be found in these half hour excursions into the surreal.
To really and truly get it, you’re going to have to watch The Midnight Gospel all the way to the end. But take it slow. One episode at a time. Fight that Netflix-contrived urge to binge. Abandon yourself to the many ideas and philosophies that Clancy and his special guests espouse. Give yourself the time you need to take in the intricacies of everything that’s happening in front of you.
Embrace The Midnight Gospel. It is ambitious. It is wild. It is moving. It is beautiful.
Midnight Gospel
Netflix, Season 1, 8 episodes
Showrunners: Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell
Director: Pendleton Ward
Writers: Mike L. Mayfield, Duncan Trussell, Brendon Walsh, Meredith Kecskemety, and Pendleton Ward
Cast: Duncan Trussell, Drew Pinsky, Anne Lamott, Raghu Markus, Damien Echols, Trudy Goodman, Jason Louv, David Nichtern, Caitlin Doughty, and Deneen Fendig
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