Nathan Alderman: It’s not that there aren’t any good shows left on NBC — just that no one’s watching, and few are calling any attention to, the good shows the network does air. Big-name guest stars and the lingering glow of Emmy success are just barely keeping the worthy 30 Rockin the limelight. And Time recently gave a well-deserved (if inexplicable) shout-out to the mostly wonderful second season of Chuck.But Crusoe, a fun and well-made revival of old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure shows, came and went with barely a murmur. (I only watched it thanks to Hulu.) And now Kings, maybe the network’s most thoughtful and intriguing drama since The West Wing, is going largely unwatched.

Then again, the words “primetime soap,” “science fiction,” and “Old Testament” have never been the biggest audience draws, particularly when they all apply to the same show. Kings follows the royal family of Silas Benjamin, some alternate Earth’s king of the modern-day nation of Gilboa, and bright young go-getter David Shepherd, a humble soldier launched into the royals’ inner circle when his fluke defeat of the much-feared Goliath tank makes him a national hero. The Biblical parallels are a bit too cutesy, to say nothing of the names. But everything else about Kings is far smarter and more compelling than you’d expect.

Watching Kings, it’s easy to wonder how anyone thought that making Deadwood’s Al Swearingen king of anything would end well. As Silas, Ian McShane’s blatantly recycling Al’s voice and mannerisms, as he seems to do these days whenever Americans turn up at his door bearing fat checks. But frankly, I’m cool with that. Al was a magnificently complex figure, pretty dang kingly in his own right, and watching this more pious, better-dressed, and decidedly less stabby variant is no less entertaining. Silas is a fascinating guy — cutthroat when he has to be, just and benevolent whenever he can, and always watching dutifully for signs from God about how he can best serve his kingdom. Lately, those signs seem to be suggesting that a certain brave young soldier may be winning away the Big Guy’s favor, a development that Silas cannot easily accept.

On the side, Silas maintains a whole other family — the woman whose love he had to surrender to fulfill his kingly destiny, and the sickly but sweet-natured son their union produced — with whom he can briefly escape to live a life unburdened by power. Somehow, this bigamy doesn’t make him come off as a scumbag, possibly because of the weary relief we see him exude in their presence. More intriguingly, he’ll occasionally slip off to a dank, deep cell for covert counsel from the man he deposed, a calmly mad tyrant played wonderfully by MacShane’s old Deadwood cohort Brian Cox.

Next to a complex, moving, slightly scary old bastard like Silas, you’d expect young David to come off as a lightweight. But that’s not the case here; both actor Christopher Egan and the careful work of the writers make David good but not perfect, naive but never stupid, and genuinely likeable all around. The series seems interested in keeping David’s body and soul alike in real peril as he stumbles through the corridors of power, which lends each episode considerable suspense. And he strikes real sparks with Allison Miller, as Silas’s daughter (or is she? cue dramatic music) Michelle. The princess has wholesome good looks and a formidable brain to back them up, and Miller brings both to the role with ease.

In fact, nearly everyone in Kings is refreshingly complex and well-developed. The scheming, imperious queen (Susannah Thompson) truly believes she’s serving her country by protecting the image of the royal family at all costs. The sulky, bratty prince (Sebastian Stan) is also a genuinely good soldier, and his seething resentment of David may have something to do with the homosexuality his position poignantly forces him to deny. Even the slimy industrialist on whose fortune Silas’s kingdom depends (Dylan Baker) has a sympathetic and human motive for his vendetta against the king. Eamonn Walker, as the King’s brooding religious advisor, and Marlyne Afflack as Silas’s scary-quiet aide, are regrettably not as well-developed three episodes in, but the actors do a great job giving them a depth and appeal that the script does not.

Kings never falls into the trap of taking itself too seriously, but it also doesn’t try to revel in over-the-top trashiness. The dignity it lends its characters ultimately reflects upon the show itself. And if the dialogue’s not quite as keen as that of great language-loving series such as Deadwood or Firefly, it’s definitely trying to be; there’s an unusual number of lovely, well-crafted lines here, some sidling dangerously close to poetry. Considering Kings was created by Michael Green, an alumnus of the largely brain-dead Heroes — and a few already-infamous Batman comics in which the Joker ran around shouting “Bunny!” for some reason, and that was supposed to be cool and scary — I’m continuously shocked by its subtlety and intelligence. Even Francis Lawrence, co-executive producer and big-deal movie director of Constantine and I Am Legend, seems to be stepping up his game here. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something downright arresting about the sterile, pristine way Kingslooks, and Lawrence’s direction gives the series real energy and style.

Even the religious element, which could be a serious stumbling block, becomes an unusual asset. It would be easy for the producers to throw in some ham-fisted miracles and special effects to really bash the religious aspect home. On at least one occasion, they’ve come dangerously close. (Magical swarm of pigeons. Eh.) But most of the time, God remains just offscreen, a palpable as the gentle pressure of an unseen hand. And when He does make His presence known, as in the pilot-ending flock of butterflies that encircle David’s head like a crown, the effect is often lovely and unnerving in equal measure. In short, the series gives good miracle.

Kings isn’t great — not yet, at least. Dramatically, it seems content to hit a series of solid doubles and triples, rather risking a big swing at a home run. But it’s honestly and surprisingly good, against all odds and expectations. It’s a primetime soap that only gives trashiness a genial, distant wave; a science fiction series about a world that somehow feels a little more real than our own; and a religious-themed show that doesn’t even remotely pretend to know what God really wants from us. Weird as I feel making this comparison, it reminds me most of Shakespeare. It’s a story about ordinary people struggling to keep their heads above the rising tide of great events… with just enough sex, violence, and intrigue thrown in to hold the audience’s attention. Kudos to NBC for giving it a shot. You’d be wise to do the same.

Lisa Schmeiser: It is impossible to watch Kings and not think that it’s airing a year too late.

The show is, at its heart, about what happens when a principled newcomer is drawn into the public eye and appointed to negotiate the corridors of power. The newcomer is up against the calcified trusses of government and society, with only his wits and morals to guide him, helped by a natural charisma that helps him connect to the populace at large. His ostensible boss — and, we are assured, his inevitable antagonist — is a king who’s rigged the system so his friends and family profit from a meaningless war. The king gives every appearance of embracing family values, but is hardly an exemplar of morality.

Does any of this ring a bell after the 2008 election season? I can’t help but watch Kings and wonder how it would have fared if it were airing while now-President Obama slogged through the primaries and general election.

However, we’re watching this a year later, and in many ways, the story that is unfolding on Kings already feels like a foregone conclusion. The real cognitive dissonance comes from where the viewer may find their sympathies gravitating. Christopher Egan’s David is written as the sympathetic newcomer, and it’s evident we’re supposed to discover the disconcertingly modern Gilboa through his eyes. Yet it’s Ian McShane’s King Silas who makes a monarchist of the viewer.

David is hailed as special — a crown of butterflies alights on his head in one episode, echoing a divine sign Silas invoked earlier in the story, his mother beats her breast over the obviousness of her seventh son’s special destiny, his piano playing is second only to his grenade-throwing. General Patton would have cried hot tears upon meeting such a fine warrior-poet. However, Egan’s given the unenviable task of playing someone whose destiny makes him somewhat superhuman, even if he’s not aware of it. Consequently, his performance is frustratingly tentative and vague. Instead of getting the sense of a man coming to grips with the divine task of overthrowing a kingdom, we’ve got a guy who looks faintly distracted, as if he just remembered leaving a phone bill on the counter on the day it’s due.

By contrast, McShane’s managed to distill exactly why we modern folk are so intrigued by monarchs: Silas appears convinced of his own divine mandate, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he’s human. In the pilot, there’s a scene where the king is overseeing his parliament, and his daughter Michelle appears before him, determined to practice statecraft as a courtier. After she pushes her healthcare reform agenda for what is apparently the nth time, King Silas dismisses Michelle’s arguments with, “Move on from an obvious impass. Sorry, Puppy.” The deft deployment of parental affection demonstrates that this king is aware of how his power can be made to work for him in all spheres, all the time. For him, the only boundaries are the ones he decides to draw.

Not only does McShane manage to make being a king look like a great gig — something the normally-gifted Jonathan Rhys-Meyers hasn’t managed through two seasons of indiscriminate beheading, fornicating and church-founding on Tudors — he also makes being human look like a worthy endeavor. Silas struggles to shape his and Gilboa’s future as he frames and reframes his deeds of the past — and if that isn’t what every human being does every day, then what else is the human condition?

So you’ve got the wonder of an all-too-human king balanced against the blank slate of a divine reformer. It’s plain who we’re supposed to pick: despite America’s uncontested world power, our popular narrative has always been one of the little guy overthrowing the despotic giant. And our cultural myths rely heavily on the idea that the Big Guy Above approves of whatever political notion takes our whimsy at the time. But Kings is asking us to put our faith in someone we can’t connect to, to back a departure from the status quo into the unknown. And from where this viewer is sitting, right now, incumbency looks a whole hell of a lot better.

Again, I wonder — what if this had aired last spring instead? Would the character David have benefitted from the real David vs. Goliath story that the mainstream media constructed across the primaries? Or would we have taken a look at a king who owned his authority without apology or accountability and said, “I want some of that?” We’ll never find out.

Ben Boychuk: Silas Benjamin is not a good king, nor is he an especially remarkable one. But Ian McShane is a remarkable actor and makes a great Silas out of a character that could have been little more than a two-dimensional tyrant. McShane’s performance is probably the best reason to watch “Kings” for as long as NBC keeps the series on the air.

Silas, of course, is based on the Old Testament’s King Saul. The Israelites demanded a king, but the prophet Samuel warned the people what they could expect from putting their trust in one ruler: “He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots… He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants… He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

“But the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

And for their sins, God gave them one.

The story goes that God crowned Silas with butterflies. Silas fought and won the Unification Wars. He built Shiloh as the capitol of Gilboa (named after the site where — spoiler alert! — the Biblical Saul made his last stand fighting the Philistines — “And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa”). He brought peace and prosperity to his people.

But, no, Silas is not a good king. He’s an impeccably tailored tyrant with holes in his socks. He maintains his power through force and fraud. He owes his kingdom to his wife’s cold calculation and her brother’s vast wealth. He’s a killer who thinks nothing of having one of his ministers killed for speaking out of turn and openly questioning the king’s war aims. He has kept King Vesper (Brian Cox) locked away for 20 years, patiently awaiting the right moment to extract the whereabouts of the mad old monarch’s gold. His heir is an irresponsible soldier and gay. And his rival is a young war hero adored by his country who Silas wants to kill one minute and spare the next.

And yet Silas isn’t all bad. He’s a caring father for his bastard son. He loves his family and his country. He seems to wrestle with his faith. He’s complicated.

It’s a shame a show of “Kings’” complexity and quality hasn’t won the audience it deserves. We know how the story ends in the Bible. Saul dies, David inherits the throne — and a whole mess of new troubles. Series creator Michael Green has created a fascinating alternate universe based on one of the greatest stories ever told. Quite a feat.

Yes, Silas is a bad king. But “Kings” is terrific TV.