A dramatic caper with heart and comedy

Review: Irreverent Season 1

Irreverent is a dramatic caper with heart and comedy. It’s a morality play with a hard edge, a juicy premise and a fresh spin on the witness protection sub-genre.

The threats on our guy Mack are real, and the relationships he cultivates become authentic, even if they don’t start out that way.

There’s a sense of fun in the stories and the lengths to which our hero must go to stay hidden, and the characters that go with him are people who will experience victory and loss. Irreverent doesn’t shy away from the messy beauty of contemporary Australian life.

The story will come from both weekly problems Mack must deal with, and his series-long goal of getting enough money together to buy a new identity with which he can get his life back on track.

It will make liberal use of action, suspense, and episodic cliff-hangers as Mack desperately tries to maintain his holy façade. Each week will explore a new problem, but also progress the growing list of problems that Mack has in the town.

In order to stay away from the crooks that are hunting him, Mack must stay hidden. But to do that, this urban criminal is going to have to convince an entire town that he’s a devoted man of God.

The stakes couldn’t get any higher; one slip up and he’s dead. But as time goes on and as Mack is forced to help people in order to maintain his cover, he discovers that maybe, just a tiny bit, he likes it.

Irreverent is a story about a crook coming to terms with the transformative power of doing good. It’s a story about family, identity, and community.

Ultimately though, Irreverent is a redemption tale that shows that happiness comes not from taking, but from giving.

Irreverent is streaming now on Netflix

Andrew Humphries

This piece originally appeared in Crosslight.