The Catholic Church hires a forensic psychologist, a seminarian and a technology contractor to check whether supposed miracles and possessions have a scientific explanation. Evil ran four seasons on that premise, premiered on CBS on September 26, 2019, and ended on Paramount+ on August 22, 2024. It is a better show than its case-of-the-week frame suggests, and a narrower one than its mythology wants to be.
Trailer, via CBS.
Katja Herbers, Mike Colter and Aasif Mandvi
The three leads are the reason to watch. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) is the forensic psychologist and the resident skeptic. David Acosta (Mike Colter) is the seminarian who wants to believe. Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) is the technology contractor who takes each incident apart looking for the trick.
Herbers plays Kristen as a woman whose disbelief works like armor, and the show keeps finding ways to crack it. Colter gives David a calm that reads as faith and doubt at once. Mandvi draws the driest lines and the most thankless job — he is the one who has to explain the wiring — and he makes it funny without making it small.
Michael Emerson as Dr. Leland Townsend
Michael Emerson’s Dr. Leland Townsend is the show’s other pole. He is a rival forensic psychologist, and he is obsessed with Kristen and her family in a way Evil treats as a real threat rather than a running gag. Emerson never raises his voice. That is what makes him work.
The Kings are not interested in debunking. They are interested in the space between the explanation and the event, and they keep the camera there.
Astoria, Brooklyn and the Move to Streaming
CBS Studios and King Size Productions made the show, and it was filmed in Astoria and Brooklyn in New York City. That matters more than it sounds. Evil looks like a city rather than a set — overcast, cramped, ordinary — and the supernatural intrudes on ordinary rooms instead of graveyards.
The move to Paramount+ after season one changed the show’s reach more than its quality. Season 2 premiered in June 2021, season 3 in June 2022, and the fourth and final season in May 2024. Fifty episodes across four seasons is a clean run for a show that spent its life near cancellation.
Sister Andrea and the Show’s Best Trick
The praise Evil drew for its performances, characters, writing, direction and cinematography is earned. The cinematography is the underrated part. The show shoots its horror in daylight, and a demon in a hallway beats a demon in a crypt.
Andrea Martin’s Sister Andrea is the clearest example of what the show does well. She is a nun who sees what the others cannot, and she is played without a trace of the pious. Evil’s best trick is that its believers are the most clear-eyed people in it.
Where the Case File Runs Thin
The case-of-the-week engine is also the ceiling. When a season commits to a serialized thread — Townsend, Kristen’s family, the Church’s internal politics — it tightens. When it drifts back to standalone investigations, it can play like a well-made procedural with a gothic coat of paint.
The final season knows it is ending and spends its time on the characters rather than the cosmology. That is the right call. Evil was never going to settle the question it opened with, and it does not pretend to.
What Evil Leaves Behind
Evil is a network show that got lucky and then got better. It moved to streaming, kept its cast, and ended on its own terms after 50 episodes, a run most supernatural dramas never get. The performances carry it, Emerson’s Townsend gives it a spine, and the Kings never let the skepticism turn smug.
It is not a perfect show. The standalone cases blur together, and the mythology sometimes promises more than it pays. But the central trio is one of the better ensembles of its era, and the show’s refusal to pick a side between science and faith is its signature rather than its flaw.
7.6 of 10.
KEY FACTS BOX
- Title: Evil
- Created by: Robert and Michelle King
- Ran: September 26, 2019 – August 22, 2024
- Seasons/episodes: 4 seasons, 50 episodes
- Networks: CBS, then Paramount+
- Starring: Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Aasif Mandvi, Michael Emerson
- Metacritic: 76/100
- Score: 7.6/10
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