God, The Devil and Bob (review)

The creators of this extremely short-lived animated NBC series would love to think that it was simply too controversial for network TV audiences and so was inevitably doomed to ignominious cancellation after only three episodes had aired. Would that it were so. The unlikely cartoon troika of God (the voice of James Garner: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood), the Devil (the voice of Alan Cumming: X2: X-Men United), and Detroit autoworker Bob (the voice of French Stewart: McHale's Navy) trade obvious barbs as they engage in your fairly standard sitcom shenanigans: saving Bob's pubescent daughter from a precocious sexuality, saving the bickering neighbors' rocky marriage, saving humanity from sure and certain annilhilation at the hands of the Almighty. See, God, unhappy with how things are proceeding in his planetary experiment, is considering trashing it all but is kinda willing to be talked out of it. So, since He is a sporting fellow, he lets the Devil pick the guy who will plead humanity's case, and we got stuck with French Stewart as our champion. It's all so wishy-washy, afraid to either actually offend believers or embrace belief -- an earthy God who drinks beer and wants people to have "happy, life-enhancing sex" is hardly worth getting worked up over -- and far too timid in its humanistic criticism of faith-based living: the greatest condemnation Bob can muster is likening God to a "deadbeat dad." Mostly, these 13 episodes resort to easy targets -- Martha Stewart as a minion of evil? Well, duh.