Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Miracle Workers’ On TBS, About A Go-Getter In Heaven Playing Matchmaker — And The Earth Is At Stake

The afterlife is big these days, at least in the comedy world. The Good Place has become one of the best shows on TV, simply by showing that the hereafter is just as messed up as things are on Earth. Simon Rich’s Miracle Workers, based on his novel What In God’s Name, is along those lines, but things are a touch less cynical and — hang on to your hats — we find out that God looks like Steve Buscemi. Read on for more…

MIRACLE WORKERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A hippie-looking guy is lounging on a white couch, watching news about all the bad stuff happening in the world — polar ice caps melting, wars, gun violence, and more. He’s completely bummed out.

The Gist: The hippie-looking guy is God (Steve Buscemi), the CEO of Heaven Inc., and he seems to be mailing it in; he didn’t even get to his plan to end all pain. And no matter what his right-hand man Sanjay (Karan Soni) does to get him going, he’s still bummed. Even the race car driver that thanked him directly later died at Daytona.

Meanwhile, new-ish angel Eliza (Geraldine Viswanathan) has been killing it in the Department of Dirt, but she wants a job where she can make a difference. She’s assigned to the Department of Answered Prayers, which is in a dark and dingy basement. There she finds Craig (Daniel Radcliffe), who has spent his millennia there alone, painstakingly taking small steps to answer small prayers, like helping people find their keys or a lost glove. Most of the bigger prayers he stamps as “Impossible” and sends upstairs, where they pile up in God’s inbox.

Eliza takes some initiative to answer a bigger prayer, which causes a typhoon that kills thousands. Undaunted, she walks into the big guy’s office and tells him that the world is in bad shape and she wants to try to solve the big prayers. That’s when God decides that he’s had enough; he’s going to blow up Earth and start over, creating a “Lazy Suzan” restaurant “in space” or something.

God likes betting “a hundo” all the time, so Eliza bets him she can answer one of his Impossible prayers. He accepts; she has two weeks to answer any of the prayers in his pile; if she wins, the Earth is saved, but if she loses, Earth is not only destroyed, but she’ll have to eat a worm and pretend to like it.

Eliza finds what she thinks is a doable prayer: Hooking up Laura (Sasha Compère) and Sam (Jon Bass), two very awkward people who just went on a very awkward first date. They’re so shy that, despite the fact that they both prayed that things work out between the two of them, getting them to reconnect is nearly impossible.

Our Take: Simon Rich based Miracle Workers on his novel What In God’s Name, and the show is backed by his former SNL boss Lorne Michaels. As you might expect, especially if you were a fan of Rich’s last series, Man Seeking Woman, the show’s humor is both subtle and broad, and the laughs are mostly character-driven.

That’s a good thing, because, while the sight gags that come with heaven being portrayed as a somewhat dysfunctional mega-conglomerate are funny — in the second episode, the Department of Genitals botches Sanjay’s request from God to blow up Bill Maher’s penis, with funny results — the characters are going to be where the story is really going to shine. And, even in the first episode, we know quite a bit about all of the show’s main characters.

Viswanathan plays the same go-getter we’ve seen in other comedies (she reminds us of Vanessa Hudgens’ character in Powerless), but she adds a sweet edge that rounds her character out. But we’re especially enamored with Radcliffe, who has made such interesting acting choices in his post-Harry Potter years, playing all manner of weird people. Craig is no different; he loves being alone, he has no social life and doesn’t care, and loves being able to help people with their tiny prayers and seeing them do a little dance. But he also has room in his life for Eliza, as we start to see in the first episode.

Of course, we also need to cite Buscemi here; he plays God as an homage to The Dude from The Big Lebowski (which he was in, of course), but with a hint of flintiness that he brings to every role he plays. God may seem like a chill dude who’s of his game, but he lets you know that you mess with him at your own risk.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but as we discussed, Bill Maher gets a particularly cruel punishment for being an atheist in a later episode.

Parting Shot: After making the bet with God, Eliza and Craig go back to their office to get to work; when they see that the guy she helped with finding his glove went on a shooting spree, they look at each other and go “F7.” What does that key do? Mute the bad news.

Sleeper Star: It’s always fun to see Angela Kinsey, who guests in the first episode as the HR director who reassigns Eliza. But we hope we see more of Lolly Adefope as Rosie, God’s seen-it-all-and-is-sick-of-it assistant Rosie. She seems to especially dislike Sanjay, so she counters his suck-up-itude whenever possible.

Most Pilot-y Line: Can’t think of any.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Miracle Workers shows an afterlife that runs better than it does in The Good Place, but is still highly flawed. But the characters are well-drawn and there are a lot of big laughs in the episodes we watched.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Miracle Workers on TBS