God Friended Me

I was drawn in by the enjoyable, clever and interesting pilot episode of this series.

Atheist podcaster Miles, who has rejected the faith of his family, is sent a friend request by God. Convinced it’s a hoax, he keeps ignoring it, but it is insistent and he finally accepts. He is immediately sent a friend suggestion for a man who just happens to be walking past him, who he follows and ends up stopping from jumping in front of a train.

The next friend recommendation is for journalist Cara who is having some family issues of her own. The two of them start to investigate what is going on, trying to hack the account and track the IP address, along with Rakesh, Miles’ coworker.

The strands get tighter between everyone as various connections are discovered between them.

***

As I continued to watch the rest of the season, I found myself intrigued. Miles’ father is a minister, his sister is a social worker who owns a local pub and is in a committed lesbian relationship, and his mother died in a car crash when he was eight. Cara has her own complicated past with a mother who deserted the family. All of the story lines become prominent at various points and are very well done.

They continue to search for the real person behind the God account, using hacking and tracking to do so. If you wanted to question the ethics, they use their workplaces to hack accounts, seem to rarely be at work and often use dodgy and deceptive methods to track people down.

Yet, each time the God account swings into operation and Miles is sent a friend request, they end up helping someone in a specific and detailed way, almost all to do with restoring relationships. Miles, Cara and Rakesh all discover they love helping people.

At one level, it’s very neat. Every episode has a storyline that ends neatly wrapped up in a bow, in a great feel good moment that often brings a tear to the eye. Yet even saying that in a somewhat cynical way, I didn’t feel cynical watching it. There is a real understanding of humankind and their struggles, the complicated lives that people have as well as their desires and dreams. The writers clearly have remarkable insights into human behaviour. Miles and Cara come to see that helping people isn’t a burden, it’s an opportunity.

At the same time, the larger mystery of who is running the God account keeps developing an overarching plot line. They are all convinced it’s a very sophisticated hacker, not that it could actually be God.

It’s an interesting premise that I have enjoyed watching. I think it could raise questions for people and be a good conversation starter. The faith represented here is not Christian (that is, Christ is never mentioned), in fact is almost entirely fits the definition of “moral therapeutic deism”. Yet, it is one of the few shows I have seen that is willing to even raise questions of faith, reason, atheism and put them together in an intelligent and even nuanced conversation. Big ideas are addressed: suffering, grand design, faith, hope, calling, unity. And over it all - why is the God account operating at all? Why operate with Miles?

Over all of this are the excellent visual effects. It’s set in New York City and the filming is fantastic. The shots are filled with beautiful light and it shows off the city in a way I haven’t seen before. The images are clean and clear and as a result the whole show feels light and positive. I don’t recall any swearing, violence or inappropriate intimacy, and I suspect you could watch it quite happily with teenagers and have some good conversations with them as a result.

I watched all of Season 1 and enjoyed both the storylines and the characters, and how they have were slowly drawn to intersect together to a quite satisfying finale.

The first series is currently available free to air on the 7Plus website, and Season 2 has just started showing.