The Midnight Gospel Season 1 Review

April 22, 2020 at 7:40pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a Netflix Original animated series that’s basically an awkward mix of being a regular show and a podcast at the same time. It’s super weird, and at first I thought it was just a sort of largely disjointed attempt at being a series of interviews. As it progressed it continued to just be stranger and more out there in terms of the content it covered. Now, this might be something that an individual would really enjoy. Its super laid back to the highest chill degree and covers many existential concepts. It goes over meditation, death and certain hot topics.

It does this while sort of skipping around some aspects to make it fit into an animated show. The just of it is that Clancy (Duncan Trussell) is going around through different existences thanks to the help of this Universe Simulator (Phil Hendrie) in order to interview various beings. You get a version of death, or say the president of an Earth where a zombie apocalypse is happening.

They mix in various professionals on each topic, and sort of awkwardly jam what they’re discussing into rather twisted worlds. I actually loved the settings, and the characters they created. It was just the setup here that I truly hated. It felt like random chats which would have been fine as a podcast, but it’s not at all what I was expecting or even could have cared for.

It’s a shame, they’ve created such a neat concept but the info backing it was just so uninteresting to me. Again, some might find this rather fascinating whereas I just didn’t care for really any of it. I found some of what was happening animation wise to be interesting, and some topics were deep, it just felt like wasted potential to me.

The animation work here is simply stunning in terms of the messed up creatures and scenarios at play. Every scene is filled to the brim with various weird entities or scenarios. That being said, some of the artwork was a bit off on edge detail if that makes sense, it didn’t seem quite as clean as it could have been.

That very well could be the aesthetic, but there was something about certain designs that looked like they could have used a bit more polish. Again to clarify, that could be the style yet it did seem rougher than it maybe could have. Going back to the voices, they work it in well to what’s going on but it still feels awkward. They’re just basically going on walks with stuff happening in the background and talking about something almost entirely out of context as to what’s happening.

You’ll get an occasional tie in and they’ll just continue on. I really thought we were getting some intriguing deep inner thoughts showed through weird galaxy exploration across time, space and dimensions though it’s just a podcast with some funky animation that goes all out. To me, that’s not what I hoped for and I really didn’t like this. I will note that at times, the death episode was interesting. I liked the background of the zombie episode though that one felt awkward. I also think the one about the mother had some touching parts backing it.

The Conclusion

The Midnight Gospel Season 1 is a super funky animated show that’s basically a podcast that’s been awkwardly shoved into a series format. It didn’t work for me, and I largely found it very boring to take in. This isn’t at all for me, and I can maybe see how some might want to watch this.

That being said, it’s more something to listen to as opposed to visualize. A shame, as the animation is far beyond the almost uninteresting discussions being told. That’s not to say that these ideas won’t interest some, I just wasn’t at all into what was being discussed.

I just kept thinking how cool this would be as a comedy about weird worlds and carrying out there ideas, that’s just not what this is however. For some it might be a calming and chill watch. For others like myself it’s basically just drivel. I might be too harsh on this, but I really did generally dislike what this was and felt it wasted some truly neat concepts and visuals.

The Midnight Gospel Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Content Access was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 3.6