I approached "The Righteous Gemstones" with a bit of trepidation, the reviews in the right places were good, but I'd given up on both "Eastbound And Down" and "Vice Principals" after a few episodes. Overall though, I enjoyed this one and stuck with it.
Wealthy Televangelist Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) runs his successful church with his family, eldest son Jesse (Danny McBride), daughter Judy (Edi Patterson) and youngest son Kelvin (Adam Devine). Scandal beckons though, as Jesse is being blackmailed with a video of a coke fuelled orgy that he and his friends took part in. Desperate to keep it from his wife and father, Jesse engages his siblings in a plan, a plan that does not involve paying the blackmailers off.
Haven't looked at any of the other reviews yet, but I can imagine that some of them take issue with Christians being the brunt of another joke, from the liberal Hollywood elite. If you actually watch the show though, I thought that it was reasonably well balanced in that regard. The target isn't Christians, nor even the poor saps that see fit to hand over their last few dollars to this mass charade. The target is the hypocritical central family who amass and abuse massive wealth whilst preaching Christian values.
Without ever really becoming a comedy-drama, there is enough plot, both in the individual episodes and the overall season to hang a story around. Occasionally, it's even a little moving, particularly with John Goodman dealing with the death of his wife and the flashback episode to 1989. It's funny though, that's the key thing. Both with the moments of wit, and with shock, slapstick or gross-out humour. Edi Patterson was really the star of the show for me, Judy is a more extreme caricature than the rest of her family, but Patterson hits all the right notes.
Looking forward to the second season.