'Lucifer' Review: Oh, Burn In Hell

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The most obnoxious show of the new year thus far, Lucifer traduces the character created by Neil Gaiman and developed by writer Mike Carey in the Lucifer comic-book series. The drama, premiering Monday on Fox, turns him into a smug twerp who delights in humiliating many perfectly nice, ordinary people as well as the bad guys he catches as an aide to a cop.

The opening scene, traditionally designed to introduce us to the main character and the tone of the show, does its job well. Lucifer Morningstar, played by Tom Ellis complete with fashionable stubble and snooty British accent, is a fallen angel tooling around Los Angeles in sporty car. He gets pulled over for speeding and we get a taste of Lucifer’s special power: he can get people to reveal their “forbidden desires.” In this case, he manipulates an honest cop just doing his job to look as though he’s a dope who’s eager to take a bribe from our supposed hero. Yeah, that really makes me really want to root for this guy as our protagonist.

Things get immediately worse. Lucifer teams up with a cop played by Lauren German to solve a murder because… I don’t know, I guess Lucifer has nothing better to do than try and fit into the mold of Fox’s quirky-crime-solvers-paired-together shows (Bones, Sleepy Hollow, Lie To Me, Fringe, etc.). German’s Det. Chloe Decker has her own unique (non-)power: she’s immune to Lucifer’s truth-eliciting powers.

Throughout, the dialogue is studded with lines that are variations on things you’ve heard and read in hundreds of devil-or-angel-on-Earth TV shows, movies, and books. Lucifer actually says, “The devil made you do it.” And when a priest crosses himself, Lucifer says sarcastically, “Yeah, good luck with that, Father, and while you’re at it, say ‘Hi’ for me.”

D.B. Woodside appears a couple of times as a fellow-devil who has to talk in a low, menacing voice at all times. I’ll bet he, like the rest of us, didn’t have to hang around listening to this devilish bore.

Lucifer airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. on Fox.