Pastor Michael clearly watches a lot of late night cable channels. He has the manner of a sleazy Dixieland preacher and the knack of making a low budget infomercial down to a fine art. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t go far beyond these one-dimensional parodies.

Michael makes good use of his timeslot, by screening self-promoting commercials, performing ‘miracles’ and involving the audience in saccharine singalongs (The last of which is particularly good.). His use of merchandise is another clever feature.

However, most of Pastor Michael’s jokes revolve around a fairly adolescent play on the concept of spreading the ‘seed’ of Christianity. The show touched on political issues such as detention centres, John Howard’s adulation of the United States and the role of religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’. It would have been great to see these ideas developed into a cohesive and acerbic commentary but they were raised then strangely forgotten.

One factor that lets the performer down is his decision to use a Southern accent. While appropriate to the genre, the accent was awkward and caused Michael to stumble over his lines, which was off-putting and broke the spell of the act. He has also adopted the mannerism of prancing energetically on stage while delivering his lines. Again, this may have mimicked a particular preaching style but was overdone and distracting – a question of nerves perhaps.

Pastor Michael brings Manna from Heaven has all the makings of a biting satire but falls disappointingly short.