Father Paul Hill

Father Paul Hill arrives on failing Crockett Island as the new parish priest, filling in for the aging Monsignor Pruitt. He's young, warm, and startlingly charismatic, preaching with an energy the dwindling congregation hasn't felt in years. Everyone assumes he's simply a gift to a dying church.

Hamish Linklater gives him the cadence of a man who genuinely believes every word he's saying, which is what makes him so unsettling and so easy to love at once. The show hands him long, unbroken sermons, and Linklater turns them into something between seduction and confession, warmth curdling slowly into zeal.