3 out of 5

Created by: Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters

covers season 1

How can you not like it?  Okay, okay, it’s a bit darling and cutesy and other inoffensive qualities, with an attractive but willingly goofy lead in star Jason Ritter – although very much playing the gone-to-seed doof here – and maybe there’s a light religious influence to chase away the Satan lovers out there, tossing this in a similar class to another recent smart and sweet but enjoyable comedy, The Good Place.  If your hackles are bared, the difference, I’d offer, is that Good Place attempts to be too smart for its own good quite often, assuming that debates on relative morality are intelligentsia bait; its high-level pitch also paints itself into a corner rather quickly.  (But yes, I do enjoy the show.)  Meanwhile, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World seems to embrace its own silliness, Ritter playing into it with wonderful comedic timing, and though its also pointed toward an endpoint, the show would seem to be eager to proceed toward that endpoint instead of Good Place’s inevitable attempts to delay it.

Discovering the full-ish nature of the premise is part of the series’ innocent charm in the first slew of episodes, but, basically, the once-rich and selfish Kevin gets a life comeuppance that has him moving in with his single mom sister (JoAnna Garcia).  Part of his “recovery” involves him doing seemingly random good deeds, bade by a constantly niggling vision of a woman named Yvette (Kimberly Hebert Gregory).  …Or is Yvette an angel, and the good deeds a last ditch attempt at finding a group of people to assist in saving a doomed world?  Yeah, maybe, probably; this is no Angel From Hell: we’re all on board soon enough, and the show can kick full gear into its good-deed-a-week format, Kevin inciting the assistance of a fun cast of characters who are in turns naive, or disbelieving, and / or etcetera.  That the show manages to balance out this feel-good stuff with healthy snark and modern-day ADD cynicism is, I feel, the creator / producer Michele Fazekas, Tara Butters, and Chris Dingess oversight, having brought a similar skilled balance to other projects with which they’ve been involved.  The great casting and consistent writing are also a big help, of course.

Now maybe you’ve noticed that three star rating.  Because Kevin (Probably) Saves the World is honest with itself: it’s not saving TV.  It’s a forty minute lighthearted comedy, with some antics and jokes you can see coming and plots that resolve with relative ease, all sprinkled with enough unique content and intelligence to make it memorable.  I hope enough of the audience agrees so we can keep enjoying its cutesy averageness for a few more seasons.