The Midnight Gospel is Netflix’s upcoming animated adult comedy series that’s all kinds of weird, wonderful, whimsical, and wrong. It’s created by Adventure Time’s Pendleton Ward and comedian Duncan Trussell, who hosts the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast (currently sitting at just over 370 episodes and which you can catch here). Clips from the podcast will appear in the series which is brought to life by the animation studio Titmouse, the people behind Netflix’s Big Mouth, the later seasons of The Venture Bros., Son of Zorn, and more.
The official plot synopsis is as follows:
The Midnight Gospel is the story of Clancy, a spacecaster with a malfunctioning multiverse simulator who leaves the comfort of his extra-dimensional home on the Chromatic Ribbon to interview beings living in other worlds.
Um… what? I recognise all those words, but I’ve never seen them used in that order before. Let’s take a look, but before we do I should issue a NSFW warning for some salty language, so you’ve been warned:
Holy sexual innuendo, Batman! I mean, it’s not just me right? You all saw that too?
Anyway, this looks like someone mixed sugar and LSD, mainlined it, and then went on the trippiest sugar rush of them all. The Adventure Time influences are very clear in the character and animation style, but The Midnight Gospel takes it so much deeper into surreal territory. It’s bright and colourful, gory, and definitely not for the kids.
I also wonder if the psychedelic trip our intrepid money-loving spacecaster is on isn’t inspired in some way by American author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was adapted into a feature starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro in 1998.
What do you think?
The Midnight Gospel’s eight-episode-long first season will premiere on Netflix on 20 April.
Last Updated: March 17, 2020
