After a leisurely debut season, HBO's stunningly creative cable-television series CARNIVALE stepped up the pace in round two of its mythic tale of good and evil set against the surreal backdrop of a Depression-era travelling circus. By the beginning of the second season, carnival roustie-cum-Christ-figure Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl) has grudgingly accepted his destiny as a "creature of light" while continuing to search for his godlike father, Henry Scudder (John Savage), in a Homeric odyssey that takes him from his demented backwoods clan to an eerily cloying maker of death masks.

Meanwhile, Ben's nemesis, the evil preacher Brother Justin (Clancy Brown), does his best to instigate an apocalyptic showdown via an increasingly powerful right-wing political campaign. When polar-opposite avatars Ben and Justin finally meet in the season's final moments, the result is one of the most powerfully emotional, profound, and shocking climaxes in television history. Though it was unduly cancelled after this season (the show was conceived by creator Daniel Knauf as a six-season story arc), CARNIVALE is an ephemeral gem that will undoubtedly be considered as groundbreaking as that other benchmark of the dark and bizarre, TWIN PEAKS.