'Lucifer' Season 1 - TV Review

'Lucifer' is a TV series built on a fairly slender but interesting idea from Neil Gaiman, who imagined Lucifer Morningstar leaving Hell - just giving the keys to someone else and taking a vacation. Gaiman wrote this for "The Sandman," so Lucifer gave the keys to Dream - never mentioned in the TV series because that's not part of their mythology, they're playing it much more Christian. We find him in Los Angeles running a highly successful club, and partnering with a female police detective he cannot influence (and who thus intrigues him). Tom Ellis is fairly good as the titular character, Lauren German is okay as his partner. Other recurring characters include Lucifer's brother Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside): an angel desperate to have Lucifer back in Hell because he's in charge in the mean time, Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt): a demon loyal to Lucifer, and Dr. Linda Martin (Rachel Harris): Lucifer's (and eventually everybody's) therapist.

Arguably it's just a police procedural where one of the two partners is painfully by-the-book and the other is a persuasive self-centred asshole with mild super powers. Which is fun for a while. But I checked out when we got to the second episode of the second season and "Mom" showed up: arguably the show had to do something, be more than just a police procedural, and going bonkers with family problems seems pretty obvious when Dad is God and one of the sons is Lucifer ... But I guess it wasn't a direction I liked.