In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox
In Canada: Mondays, 9/8c, CTV
In the UK: Tuesdays, 10pm, Sky Atlantic
Serial killers. Aren’t we done with them yet? Haven’t Silence of the Lambs, Saw I-XXV, four seasons of Profiler, and 2,435 seasons of Criminal Minds and its spin-off mined everything this group of particularly sick and crazy people of all they could contribute to narrative?
Apparently not, because Kevin Williamson (yes, the creator of Dawson Creek and the TV version of The Vampire Diaries, but also of the Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer film franchises) has decided that enough isn’t enough, and we need another serial killer, preferably smart (not average IQ like most real serial killers), British (like Anthony Hopkins but unlike practically every real serial killer in the US) and merely sadistic (unlike most serial killers, who have sexual motivations for their crimes). And what better than to have a law enforcement operative, preferably with their own problems, trying to catch him with the help of less-inspired police-type people (cf Will Graham, Clarice Starling, Samantha Waters, Patrick Jane et al)?
So far, so entirely derivative. In fact, it was originally the script for Scream 3. So what, if anything, does Williamson’s reheated new show, The Following, have to offer? Well, it’s got the rather marvellous James Purefoy from Rome, Camelot and The Philanthropist, as the Edgar Allen Poe-obsessed killer, and the return of Kevin “centre of the universe” Bacon to network TV after 30 years (or something) away. It’s also got another innovation – a cult of serial killers that Purefoy has been nurturing over the Internet from jail for all this time, a cult the members of which are prepared to lie in wait for years, getting close to people, until Purefoy tells them to leap into action as part of his new, sinister plan.
But apart from that, it’s exactly what you might be expecting of a serial killer show: lots of incredibly nasty violence and women being victimised while a lone investigator and his band of dull assistants try to stop the worst from happening (usually not in time). Here’s a trailer:
Continue reading “Review: The Following 1×1 (Fox/Sky Atlantic)”
