Daringly weird American Gods is mesmerising

IT’S confronting, strange and not for everyone but if you give your attention to American Gods, you will be richly rewarded.

DON’T even think about watching American Gods on your mobile, tablet or laptop. American Gods demands to be seen on the biggest screen in your house.

It is so visually impressive in its scope and imagination, experiencing American Gods on anything less than a 50-inch TV is a waste.

Based on Neil Gaiman’s best-selling book, American Gods is an expensive, gorgeous eight-episode series about a forthcoming battle between the old gods (Odin, Jesus) and new (technology, globalisation and media) as they jostle for power and relevance.

But it’s not a swords and sandals deal. Set firmly in the present day, Shadow Moon (Rick Whittle) is a felon about to be released from prison. Days out, he’s told his wife Laura (Australian actor Emily Browning) died in a car crash with his best friend.

On his way back home to his wife’s funeral, he meets the mercurial and wily Mr Wednesday (Ian McShane) who offers him a job as his bodyman. Haunted by vivid dreams of his dead wife, Shadow joins Mr Wednesday as the pair set off to recruit allies.

Secret handshake.

But that description can’t even begin to give a sense of how alluringly weird American Gods is. It’s addictive yet repellent, luring you in with its fantastical philosophy while confusing you with the alien-ness of it. It’s not just the idea that magic is real but how intangible reality is.

In a TV show where the “real world” feels like a constant dreamscape, imagine what the dreams are like.

It’s that very dreamscape “feeling” all of its imagery evokes. From the use of extreme close-ups — steam coming off a freshly-drawn bath, a spoon stirring in a pot, the rackety wheel of a shopping trolley — to the pulpy aesthetic of its violence, American Gods is an ambitious work of art.

The sequences with Bilquis, a god of love, are particularly confronting and mesmerising. Enveloped in a fiery red room, she literally devours her lovers through her vagina mid-coitus. It really is one of the most viscerally unnerving few minutes of TV you’ll experience and it so beautifully captures American Gods’ daringly bizarre spirit.

They say female preying mantises bite their mate’s head off during copulation.

Oozing with charm, Mr Wednesday is played with relish by McShane, every riddle-like word spoken like a delicious secret. While Shadow is more laconic, Whittle’s physical presence looms in every frame.

Every character you meet — Pablo Schreiber’s Mad Sweeney leprechaun, Cloris Leachman’s fortune-telling sister, Gillian Anderson’s Media god — is someone you can’t take your eyes off. This is not a show you can watch while blithely scrolling through Facebook. It demands all your attention and it deserves it — or you have no chance in hell keeping up.

Adapted by Bryan Fuller, American Gods is a testament to this visually stylish and fanciful creator. Fuller has always dabbled in critically acclaimed, if little watched, off-kilter works, with a predilection for stories to do with death.

His first TV show, Dead Like Me, was about a young woman who finds out after she dies that she is now a grim reaper while Wonderfalls was about another young woman who could talk to animal figurines. And Pushing Daisies centred on a character that could bring people and things back to life with his touch.

By the time Fuller got to Hannibal, completely reinventing a by-then stodgy franchise, he had cemented a confident creative style to tell his stories his way. It’ll be interesting to see what he will do with the new Star Trek series set to debut later this year.

He was the right guy to bring to screen such an iconic work from a writer as revered as Gaiman. It’s not easy to breathe to life something so singular like American Gods in all its eccentric glory.

It isn’t an easy watch and it’s not for everyone. But those who embrace its non-conformity will be richly rewarded.

New episodes of American Gods will become available weekly on Mondays at 5pm AEST on Amazon Prime Video.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

*Amazon Prime is not directly compatible with many TVs, puck-style digital set-top boxes or gaming consoles. I implore you to connect your iOS or Android device or laptop to your TV via HDMI or screen mirroring technology such as AirPlay. It’s absolutely worth watching on the bigger screen.

Crash test dummies.