“Everyone Else Burns” makes a nice addition to The CW’s growing primetime lineup comprised mostly of quality imports.
The droll British comedy, airing on Channel 4 in the UK — where it’s been renewed for a second season — premieres Oct. 26 (9:30 p.m.).
It revolves around the uber-religious Lewis family, who live in Manchester and led by God-fearing patriarch David (Simon Bird), he of the Moe Howard/”Three Stooges” haircut who breathes hellfire — when he’s not working his day job at a packaging center with savant-like skill. David believes the apocalypse lurks just around the corner — namely 2025, when, he says, the world will end.
“You get biscuits after the moon’s turned to blood,” he tells his young son, Aaron (Harry Connor), who complains that he’s hungry after an enforced two-hour, late-night “Apocalypse Practice” run into the countryside.
David’s grim-visaged wife Fiona (Kate O’Flynn) and 17-year-old daughter Kate (Amy James-Kelly), secretly yearn to expand their horizons beyond the Order of the Divine Rod church, which considers caffeine a drug and expels a family who’ve opened a coffee shop since their souls are destined to burn in hell for eternity.
Fiona and Rachel indulge David’s blinkered fire-and-brimestone talk … to a point … but they’re running out of patience. Aaron is starting to doubt his father’s prophesies and expresses his feelings through gothic-horror sketches that are definitely not David-friendly — and even David has his creeping doubts when he’s passed over as a church Elder in favor of his frenemy, Andrew (Kadiff Kirwan).
The series opener establishes its premise nicely and introduces many of the characters who play bigger roles later on, including recently divorced neighbor Melissa (Morgana Robinson) — who’s only too glad to offer Fiona real-world advice on following her dreams and fighting back against David — and Joshua (Ali Khan).
He’s a fallen church member (from a different branch) who Rachel meets while out (unenthusiastically) preaching; there’s a spark between them, if only Joshua can draw Rachel out of her shell to see beyond the church dogma that rules her psyche. (She wants to be a doctor, but David frowns on her attending university, where she would be corrupted — or, as Fiona says at one point, “it’s father just subjugating the family.”)
It all sounds rather serious but, trust me, it’s not. “Everybody Else Burns” is a subtle comedy and doesn’t hit you over the head with sight gags or one-liners, though there are a few of those as when David describes Andrew’s cologne: “He smells like an embalmed king.”
The series takes its time to construct its multi-layered the lead characters. David, for all his peccadilloes, is a well-intentioned clod who tries to do the right thing (as he sees it) but is socially awkward and tone-deaf to his family’s semi-rebellion and to Fiona’s emotional needs. There’s still love there, but it’s buried and needs to be recovered. On the bright side, David gives Rachel his flip-phone, the one he hasn’t used since 9/11, so he’s trying.
Fiona starts an online business that turns into a success and even allows herself a smile or two; Rachel begins to listen to her inner feelings about Josh and tries to overcome her overwhelming guilt at the prospect; and bleak young Aaron, it turns out, has packaging skills on par with dear old dad.
There’s hope, after all … as long as the world doesn’t end.
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