I am – Hercules!!


It’s a supernatural comedy-drama, from “Deadwood” mastermind David Milch, about an exceedingly strange young man named John Monad who may secretly be Jesus or Starman or something. When he gets involved with a Southern California surfing dynasty, exciting levitation and resurrection ensue. Bruce Greenwood and Rebecca De Mornay play the grandparents of a teen. This serves as a bracing reminder that “St. Elsewhere” and “Risky Business” came along more than two decades ago. Others in the cast include the great Ed O’Neill and Luke Perry.

The reviews are mostly disparaging (a key exception being Entertainment Weekly, which gives it an A-minus). Still, just based on the premise and pedigree and the promos, I sense this series could attract a rabid and vocal cult following by the time its first season concludes.

The good news for "John From Cincinnati" is it won’t have to compete with new episodes of the Golden Globe-winning “Desperate Housewives,” which attracted many times the audience of “Rome,” “The Wire” and “The Sopranos.”

Time says:

… Its visuals are gorgeous and its mystical glimpses tantalizing, but its transcendence is more asserted than earned. We sinful mortals still want prosaic things like a story. Until John from Cincinnati provides that, it will float two inches above the ground, too beautiful and pure for this earth--or our attention.

TV Guide says:

… It rides a wave of idiosyncratic surrealism that may baffle, annoy and frustrate as many viewers as it enchants, amuses and mesmerizes. For now, count me in the former camp. …

USA Today gives it two stars (out of four) says:

… it's hard to imagine the show coming from anyone but Milch, imbued as it is with Milch's existential concerns and that fractured, sometimes impenetrable Milchian grammar so familiar from Blue. Unfortunately, it's equally hard to imagine who would want to watch it on a weekly basis — or whether there's any audience at all for a beach-blanket-bingo philosophical fantasy. …

Entertainment Weekly gives it an “A-minus” and says:

… The ceaseless ways in which Milch and Nunn challenge our expectations about how families, friends, and strangers are meant to convey their fealty to each other, along with some fine hard-boiled dialogue and fisticuffs, suggest great continuing pleasures. …

The Wall Street Journal says:

… Viewers may get their very own taste of hell throughout the first episode, which is something like being confined by mistake to a mental institution in a "Snake Pit" scenario, where all the inmates are screaming obscenities and bouncing off the proverbial walls. …

The New York Times says:

… not likely to fulfill the nation’s yearning to fill the void left by “The Sopranos,” or, for that matter, “Deadwood.” It’s more like “Big Love” or “Carnivàle,” smart, ambitious series that move unusual characters around an unfamiliar setting imaginatively and even with grace, but that never quite quit the surly bonds of serial drama. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

David Milch is the last guy I'd figure to bring back "Touched by an Angel" … Though it eventually catches a tail wind, "John From Cincinnati" is, in the early going, morose and claustrophobic. … Sometimes "John From Cincinnati" is a muddle, at other times rich drama and divine comedy. And sometimes it's all of that at once. …

The Chicago Tribune says:

It's only June, but I can confidently state that you won’t see a weirder show than "John From Cincinnati" all year long.… I’d tell you what “John” is about, if only I felt sure of, well, what it’s about. But after viewing three episodes, I don’t feel especially clued in. …

The Washington Post says:

Not until the last 10 minutes of the show do we finally get to see some fancy wave work, and unfortunately very little about the 40 minutes that precede this refreshing footage manages to make any appreciable sense. … there's no indication how many episodes of this series will have to be watched before any of it starts making sense. Come to think of it now, "For No Apparent Reason" would be a good title for the series -- at least as good as the self-consciously precious one it has. … Shows like "John From Cincinnati" are why the good Lord made remote-control clickers.

The Boston Globe says:

… Watching HBO's surfing drama "John From Cincinnati" is like sitting through a bad play at a tiny experimental theater. The dialogue is loud pretentious nonsense signifying nothing but the creative dangers of mimicking Sam Shepard , Edward Albee , and Samuel Beckett . And the acting is a psychic traffic jam, because the actors don't understand their characters, because their characters are no more than vague symbols of -- what? -- being, nothingness, and the fury of being nothing. …

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says:

… the greatest of minds have been responsible for spectacularly regrettable mistakes. That is what we have in David Milch's new series "John From Cincinnati," a fresh floater in HBO's bathwater. … The only thing a person can be certain of after watching "John From Cincinnati" is this: Any die-hard "Deadwood" fan interested in keeping the veins in his forehead intact should not bother with it. Watching it will only make you want to hurt your television, and it's unkind and quite expensive to punish the messenger so harshly.

The Orlando Sentinel says:

… a lot like its title character: baffling, irritating, simply strange. … The correct surfing term for this show: Wipeout! … A pretentious and talky botch …

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… three episodes in, I started to buy into the world Milch has created. I don't understand it, I don't think I even really like it (almost all of the characters are damaged and rather unpleasant), but I am intrigued by it. (Enough to keep watching? We'll see.) …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… intriguing but not entirely satisfying … David Milch, the genius behind "Deadwood," has enough creative savvy to bring charm and luster even to a story about an off-putting, dysfunctional multigenerational family steeped in surfing tradition, which is exactly what he does here. Between their boozing, drug abuse, whining and generally ugly dispositions, watching the Yost family is only slightly more enjoyable than a root canal. …

Variety says:

… even worshippers at the altar of writer extraordinaire David Milch are likely to find themselves bewildered and frustrated with the premiere, and two subsequent episodes only marginally improve matters.…

10 p.m. Sunday. HBO.

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