Preacher arrived with much fanfare and an excellent opening episode. But if you gave up shortly after that, no one would blame you. The following four episodes were slow character studies that didn’t give their characters much to do. Cassidy was an adorable scamp, of course, but Tulip was just a crazy ex-girlfriend and Jesse was bogged down by his uninteresting congregation. It wasn’t until the end of episode five (episode five!), when Jesse finally learned what the entity inside him was, that things switched up a gear.



And boy, those people who gave up on the show are going to regret it, because as it leaps head-first into the season one finale, Preacher is finally living up to those flashes of violent, bonkers genius that were glimpsed in the first few episodes. And, perhaps not coincidentally, that’s also when the show started diverging from the comics.

In some ways, it’s becoming more faithful to the source material. Jesse has finally set out on the path he follows in the comics – to find God and make him answer for the epic shit-heap that is life on Earth – and now non-comic-readers finally know why the cowboy scenes were important. But far more interesting than the comic references are the ways in which the show is switching things up.

The showrunners stated when the series began that they wanted to show Jesse actually being a preacher, something the comics never did. And in the first five episodes you see why the comics didn’t bother showing it – life as a preacher is pretty dull. But it all makes sense now, because showing Jesse as a believer – or at least someone who is given a reason to believe when he becomes host to Genesis – means that we can watch him become a terrifying missionary, forcing people to convert with the power of his voice.

The comic series made it clear that Jesse’s power was a potentially corrupting influence, but seeing that power in the hands of someone who was fast becoming a religious zealot was genuinely unnerving. Jesse has come back from the edge now, and his desire to make amends (and force God to do the same) feels earned.

The two most shocking moments of the series also had nothing to do with the comics: Jesse sends Eugene to hell, and the initially deadly dull Emily feeds Mayor Miles to Cassidy. The series is also doing wonders with the angels – far more interesting and hilarious here than they ever were on the page – and the formally one-dimensional Tulip is turning into possibly the most touching character in the whole show.

Episode eight also gave an insight into Odin Quincannon that gave the wonderful Jackie Earle Haley something to really get his teeth into. Rather than the overblown gross-out humour of the “meat shed” in the comics, the TV instead gives us something much darker. Following the death of Odin’s entire family, Jesse’s dad found Odin covered in gore, holding two intestines. Which, he asks, is his daughter’s, and which belongs to the cow he just slaughtered? Odin dug deep under the layers of civilised humanity and found that, when it comes down to it, everyone’s just meat. That sort of existential crisis is going to do some real damage to a person. At the same time, Sheriff Root, nothing more than an angry caricature in the comics, is gaining surprising depth on the TV show.

The show’s best set-pieces – the angel fight in the motel room, the Meat & Power Company’s siege-turned-barbecue – have nothing to do with the comic. It’s blazing its own path, and it’s all the better for it. Some might accuse the show of cowardice, of not daring to go to some of the most blasphemous and sexually deviant places from the comic, but what’s blackly funny on the page wouldn’t necessarily land on screen. Odin is far more unsettling for having turned his dead family into meat. If Custer Sr had walked in on him humping a meat puppet instead, he’d be a laughing stock.

The show is beginning to tread that fine line between being faithful to the source material and throwing in enough curveballs to keep even comic fans on their toes. It’s shaping up to be one of the most successful screen adaptations of recent years.