Prosper review – Richard Roxburgh leads a sizzling and sharp megachurch thriller

The rise and shocking fall of Hillsong has been unpacked in multiple documentaries, and may in part be inspiration for Stan’s addictively lurid new drama, Prosper, which plays a lot like a thriller, with sharp, lacerating edges and a brittle atmosphere.

The show’s press kit doesn’t mention the Australian megachurch, which began in New South Wales and expanded to various countries around the world including the US, but the resemblance seems at least as arguable as it was between Scientology and Paul Thomas Anderson’s film The Master.

Like with Hillsong, the church in Prosper – called U Star – is at the centre of a seemingly endless array of scandals. Creators Matt Cameron and Jason Stephens enter a very interesting dramatic space, with a more contemporary setting than we’re used to on screen: no cathedrals, no mass, no priests in robes; instead, strobe lights and lasers. Places of religious worship now look like the sorts of venues where I took party drugs in my 20s.

It begins with U Star’s founder and leader, pastor Cal Quinn (Richard Roxburgh), on stage exclaiming “hallelujah!” when a huge, fancy new screen is activated behind him. Quinn likes to serve the lord – but he loves to be the centre of attention.

Directed by Jennifer Leacey and Shaun Wilson, the corporatisation of the church is reflected through a cold colour scheme: lots of concrete greys and steely blues. The show focuses on U Star’s behind-the-scenes machinations, from putting on services and driving investments to managing various crises and wrestling political influence – the latter becoming a priority in the face of a looming charity tax bill from the federal government.

“We don’t do things by halves,” Cal tells his daughter Issy (Hayley McCarthy). The same could be said of the show itself. The plot bolts out of the gates and serves up a sizzling array of sordid goings-on involving drugs, death, deceit, blackmail, long-kept secrets and various other jiggery-pokery. Drama flows so thick and fast I feared for the show’s ability to sustain itself over eight episodes (this review encompasses all of them). I needn’t have: writers Matt Cameron, Louise Fox, Belinda Chayko and Liz Doran keep it roaring along, crackling and fizzing and occasionally reaching sensational inflection points.

During an early “walk and talk”, Cal tells his wife Abi (Rebecca Gibney) that he’s about to expand U Turn into Los Angeles. We learn the pair have issues with their son Jed (Jacob Collins-Levy), who fell out with them years ago and now runs a community centre for the downtrodden, walking the walk. Their other son Dion (Ewen Leslie) wants to climb the ranks of the pulpit – or perhaps “crowd surf in the holy moshpit” is a more fitting turn of phrase. Their daughter Issy, a singer, carries with her an old family secret, though a more pressing concern for Cal is what to do with an unhinged parishioner, Rosa (Brigid Zengeni), with whom, on the sly of course, he parties and snorts drugs. Cal even has a right-hand man who’s the equivalent of Mike from Breaking Bad: the goonish Eli (Jacek Koman), who has no problems getting his hands dirty.

Cal is a slick operator but agitated and volatile: the kind of troubled soul he likes to steer towards the collection bowl. “You’re not right – it’s like something’s broken,” Abi tells him in the second episode. Gibney gives her character a sly balance of compassion and calculation; Abi acutely understands it’s in her best interests to be nice to people and to keep track of her favours.

Roxburgh’s charisma, meanwhile, is well suited to Cal, a man of multitudes – certainly not a charlatan, because his belief in God is genuine, but very much a wheeler and dealer, who believes that when it comes to the church’s success the ends always justify the means. Ewen Leslie is eerily smug and pious as Dion, and in fact pretty much everybody in the cast impresses – including McCarthy as Issy, Collins-Levy as Jed and Andrea Solonge as Rosa’s daughter Juno.

Prosper brings religious-themed Australian dramas such as The Devil’s Playground and Brides of Christ thundering into the modern world: a racy and pacy concoction for a more cynical and secular time. About halfway through the series, Cal asks the parents of an accident victim in hospital whether they’d like him to pray for them. “Who do you think you are?” they respond. “Piss off with your prayers.” Like the series itself, this scene has been dramatically heightened, but the story it’s telling rings true.

• Prosper is now streaming on Stan