Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

George Michael said you gotta have faith, but Shadow Moon, the protagonist of the Starz series American Gods, mightily struggles with his own belief system when he meets deities during a bizarre road trip.

Based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 contemporary fantasy novel, Gods stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow, an ex-convict who, just after learning his wife (Emily Browning) has died, becomes embroiled in a confrontation between mythological Old Gods and the personifications of technology known as New Gods.

In Gods, which begins its eight-episode first season April 30 (Sundays, 9 ET/PT) after a world premiere Saturday at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival, “we get to talk about faith and belief and where we direct our energy in the world as a common reflection for these characters going through this journey,” says executive producer Bryan Fuller.

Shadow is returning to Indiana for his wife’s funeral when he meets the mysterious con man Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane). Wednesday offers him a job as his bodyguard and confidante, but Shadow balks, thinking the old guy's a nut job. However, Shadow quickly becomes convinced that there’s something strange afoot when he encounters a number of otherworldly situations: He gets into a bar fight with a leprechaun named Mad Sweeney (Pablo Schreiber), and is accosted by the faceless goons of the Technical Boy (Bruce Langley).

“The world around him is unraveling and his big struggle is, is he crazy or is the world crazy?” Whittle says. “How much can you put in front of him before he actually starts to believe?"

Shadow cautiously comes aboard Mr. Wednesday's cross-country mission to round up the Old Gods now living ordinary lives, and the pair's relationship is as key to American Gods “as your heart is to your body,” Fuller says.

Adds executive producer Michael Green: “Shadow starts the series as someone comfortably American and feeling like he’s already a citizen of the world," but he's "an immigrant into the new culture of the world of gods and magic.”

The roster of Old Gods includes Easter (Kristin Chenoweth), who wants to prove she’s more than a holiday with bunny rabbits and colored eggs; Bilquis (Yetide Badaki), a love goddess whose bedroom habits get downright bloody; and Vulcan (Corbin Bernsen), a god of guns created specifically for the show.

As for New Gods, The Technical Boy rules the Internet, the TV goddess Media (Gillian Anderson) takes the form of iconic celebrities and the enigmatic Mr. World (Crispin Glover) exists in a “heightened reality that threatens Shadow’s sanity,” says Fuller.

While Old Gods have a very concrete memory of what it's like to be worshipped by those “who show their faith by bending knee, giving willing sacrifice and announcing that devotion clearly and in song,” Green says, “the New Gods all evolved in times where worship is a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, pilfered, clicked and to be gotten from people, with or without their notice.”

Adds Whittle: "These are real gods with real-world problems — they’re struggling in life as people have lost their faith and belief. These guys are living amongst us and living ordinary lives. That allows even the most skeptical people who maybe aren’t into fantasy to really get into this show."