Warning! AMC's "Preacher" Will Be TV's Next Big Thing

I have seen only the first episode of AMC’s blazing new thrill ride “Preacher” – first in a Pasadena movie theater at a private screening for Television Critics Association members in January, and more recently on my television in Connecticut – so I figure this is a good time to begin weighing in on what will certainly become yet another AMC series that demands perpetual attention in the press as it progresses, not unlike “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” “Preacher” should fit comfortably into that group, if only because it is not in any way similar to anything else we have ever seen on advertiser supported television with the possible exception of FX’s graphic “American Horror Story” franchise. But where “AHS” has from the start been a hot mess at best (and a stone cold one at worst), “Preacher,” if handled correctly, will quickly develop into a thing of scorching beauty and exquisitely orchestrated madness. How can it not, when its canvas includes an alcoholic vampire, a young man whose disfigured face resembles an anus (that would be Arseface, pictured below) and a man of the cloth possessed by an unspeakable being that is actually something spawned by an unholy celestial coupling? Also in the mix: The spirit of John Wayne, God at His wit’s end and a global covert operation charged with protecting the sacred bloodline of … Wait. That would be spoiling things.