Lucifer as the misunderstood naughty boy with Daddy issues

Jason suggested I watch the first episode of Lucifer, a combined supernatural/police procedural show with a humorous touch that is on Netflix now.

I did last night, and my thoughts are as follows:

It was enjoyable enough for me to watch again, but I have some reservations.

The actor playing Lucifer does it with a tad too much of what might be called "straight camp" if you ask me, but perhaps that's bit unavoidable given the lines he is given.  The emphasis on his enjoyment of sex I found a little bit off putting.   It reminded me of the movie Michael, in which John Travolta played the Archangel Michael as a supernatural character who enjoyed pleasuring women sexually.   I remember reading at the time that the writer defended this as being closer to the Old Testament version of angels, who walked and interacted with humans and weren't the ghost-like pure spirit creatures as Christianity came to think of them.   That may be right, but I think that supernatural beings enjoying sex with humans is still a very odd concept to the modern mind,  where ever it appears:  I think its a large part of what makes Greek mythology strange to us now.

As for the bigger picture, of Lucifer's depiction as more or less "just doing a job" when he was Lord of Hell: yes, it is sort of interesting.   I found a detailed version of this explained in an article from 2006 at Phys.org, of all places -  reviewing a book "Satan: A Biography". 

Henry Ansgar Kelly puts forth the most comprehensive case ever made for sympathy for the devil, arguing that the Bible actually provides a kinder, gentler version of the infamous antagonist than typically thought.

"A strict reading of the Bible shows Satan to be less like Darth Vader and more and more like an overzealous prosecutor," said Kelly, a UCLA professor emeritus of English and the former director of the university's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. "He's not so much the proud and angry figure who turns away from God as [he is] a Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. Satan's basic intention is to uncover wrongdoing and treachery, however overzealous and unscrupulous the means. But he's still part of God's administration."

 That fits in extremely well with his depiction in the show, don't you think?