According to my brother, they were a vicious, but not particularly well-formulated, attack on religion in general and especially Christianity. There was also something about the rules or perspective of the series contradicting itself, and accidentally making a bad guy a hero or the other way around.

As far as the movie a few years ago, with Eva Green, Daniel Craig & Nicole Kidman and the voice of Ian McKellan, I remember one review saying it was more boring than Craig & Kidman's alien invader movie that put me to sleep in the theater and another saying that he'd pay money to hear McKellan read the phone book, but this was like hearing him read a Dungeons & Dragons manual.

Given that the hero is a little girl, I would imagine the current show is pretty insufferable.