There is no shortage of TV shows about the supernatural—there’s even a show called “Supernatural”—but there are relatively few truly interested in religion. On mainstream television, “religious,” and especially “Christian,” is usually a euphemism for well-behaved and mildly inspirational, as in shows like “Touched by an Angel” or “7th Heaven.” But six episodes into its first season, “The Leftovers,” the HBO drama, has proven itself to be the exception: It is a show whose central concerns are not just religious but theological. It asks the question, what would have to happen for us to take religion seriously again? And would the world be better off if we did?
The premise of “The Leftovers” is deceptively high-concept. One October 14—we never learn the year, but the show is clearly set in our present—2 percent of the world’s population abruptly vanishes. Evangelical Christianity, of course, has a name for such a phenomenon: It is the Rapture, when the saved are taken bodily up to Heaven, while the rest of us are left to fight it out here below. But while the Rapture has inspired a significant body of films and books—most notably the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins—the whole point of “The Leftovers” (based on a novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta) is that the Sudden Departure, as it is known, is not so theologically legible.
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