By God, the end of the world shouldn’t be this funny

The cast of religious sitcom Everyone Else Burns, streaming now on Neon: (L-R) Amy James-Kelly, Kate O'Flynn, Simon Bird and Harry Connor.

There shouldn’t be anything funny about having your eternal soul burnt slowly and painfully in the fiery pits of hell for endless millennia. This fear is the fuel of many religions. Especially the big C and its many offshoots and variants. The Bible’s Book of Revelation makes it very clear that the apocalypse should be considered no laughing matter lest thou gets another strike against thou’s name on the wrong side of the sin/virtue tally.

Yet in the new British sitcom, Everyone Else Burns the impending rapture - which sees Christians ascend to the heavens while the rabble roasts in the religious flames wrought by a vengeful God who has had it up to here with all the sinning, fornicating and blaspheming happening on His (or Hers) fine creation of the earth - is very funny indeed. Specifically, the preparations for said religious event by the Lewis family and the piously smug belief of David, the family patriarch, that they will indeed be fine, but everyone else will burn.

Pictured: (L-R) Amy James-Kelly as Rachel, Kate O'Flynn as Fiona, Harry Connor as Aaron and Simon Bird as David.

The family are members of a staunchly devout branch of the church called The Order of the Divine Rod who revels in the idea of the rapture and can’t wait for the fire and brimstone to rain down. They can be likened to a cult, only with more praying and less Kool-aid and hiding in plain view under the legitimacy of the church. So puritanical are they that a couple was exiled after becoming “drug dealers”.

“Of course, we see coffee as a drug,” the priest cheerfully explains as Fiona mutters that the newly exiled couple knew what they were getting into “when they opened that cafe”.

The show opens in the middle of the night as the apocalypse begins. David is tearing around the house, ringing an oversized bell to rouse his family from their slumber and get them out the door. Once they’ve got the cat in the pet carry case and chosen a memento to take, they begin the long trek from the suburbs to the hills where they plan to ascend. It’s organised chaos and ends with the family arriving at the top in the early morning daylight without even a spark in sight. David is less than pleased with the two-hour-plus time it took them to get there, wife Fiona is inwardly fuming at her husband’s false alarm, teenage daughter Rachel is traumatised having thought God was going to leave her to burn and young son Aaron is almightily peeved that the world hasn’t actually come to an end at all.

Pictured: Kate O'Flynn as Fiona.

These small cracks in the good ship Lewis are what threaten to sink the ark as their real-world circumstances and the righteousness of their religion begin to clash in irreparable ways. Well, for everyone except David whose gratingly blind faith is completely unshakeable.

This inadvertently makes him the cause of much of his family’s misery. Fiona, while also a true believer, is completely stifled, unable to even do something as simple as relaxing in front of the TV because David poured water on it when it brought sin into the house via a scene where two people kissed. Rachel is berated by both parents for getting straight A’s on her report card because studying has obviously taken time away from preaching and Aaron is holding a creatively violent grudge over being still alive.

Pictured: (L-R) Simon Bird as David, Amy James-Kelly as Rachel and Kate O'Flynn as Fiona.

David, however, is mostly oblivious to the straying of his flock. Instead, he’s obsessed with being promoted to the rank of Elder within the church. This would allow him to leave his job at the post office where his god-given talent at sorting packages has made him an indispensable member of staff to instead lord it over the church’s congregation full time.

“Goodbye, sinners,” he triumphantly declares from underneath television’s most appalling haircut of 2023, as he preemptively quits his job and heads to church for his big promotion. Only, he doesn’t get it. Instead, his rival ascends to the position, setting in motion his own personal spiral.

Pictured: (L-R) Simon Bird as David and Harry Connor as Aaron.

David is played by the brilliantly comedic Simon Bird, still instantly recognisable from his lead role as the geeky nerd Will in the cult coming-of-age sitcom fave The Inbetweeners. Here, he personifies a deluded, self-satisfied arrogance that sees him taking that particular thorny crown off of The Office’s David Brent. It doesn’t feel like Bird’s particularly stretching himself, but he’s so good that it doesn’t matter.

The show is smart with plenty of gags, ranging from subtle and dry to slapstick obvious. Nothing is ever truly laugh out loud but it is constantly amusing. It’s a fairly unique concept but the familial drama seems to be walking down a familiar path. I’ve enjoyed the few episodes I’ve seen. But whether it arrives at the promised land or blows up at the end remains, at this point at least, a question of faith.