TV reviews

In the US: Fridays, 9pm ET, Chiller
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Look left. Look right. Look left again. What do you see? 

Another US cable network making scripted TV shows, that’s what. It’s all Netflix’s fault apparently, with its $5bn content budget forcing cable to up its game to compete.

It’s got to be good, right? More choice for the consumer n’all? Certainly, we’ve had some good results from the likes of SundanceTV, History, WGN America and more.

But as we’ve seen with the likes of Crackle, WE tv, the Playstation Network, etc, there appears to be only a certain amount of talent around, both in production and commissioning, and they’ve already been used up. When you’re starting from scratch as these networks are, you almost have to reinvent everything and if all the good people are already occupied elsewhere, you’re going to be left with the inexperienced and less talented to do that.

Slasher is I think the best example of this problem so far. A Canadian-American co-production, it is the first venture into scripted TV by horror channel Chiller and is basically a distillation of every slasher movie and TV show you’ve ever seen, made by people who want to homage but don’t have any real idea how to create something new.

It starts in the 80s with a figure wearing Zoom’s mask from The Flash visiting a house at Halloween (stop me if you’ve heard this one before…). There he carves up a family with a great big knife, leaving only the baby daughter alive.

Fast forward to the present day and the grown-up daughter (Katie McGrath from Merlin and Dracula) returns to her home town with her husband (Brandon Jay McLaren from Graceland) and indeed her home, as she decides it’s a cunning plan to move back into her parents’ old house. Wouldn’t you know it – no sooner does she do so then a series of copycat murders start occuring, performed by someone dressed just like her parents’ killer, who is still in jail.

Visiting the bad man in question to find out more, ClariceKatie learns that maybe her parents weren’t as innocent as she thought, having filmed all kinds of sex tapes in their basement with various members of the local community. Were they being punished for their sins? And are the new murders similar punishment for those who would commit one of the Se7en seven deadly sins?

Slasher is intensely stupid at pretty much every level. McLaren is a freelance journalist but gets made editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, which was instituted by a bunch of go-getting youngsters from scratch. That happens all the time, obvs. McGrath, in turn, is an artist who wants to open an art gallery. Because if you want to make the big bucks, small town art galleries are where it’s at, aren’t they? McGrath discovers all those hidden video tapes in her parents’ entirely dust-free basement after nearly 30 years because they’ve been cunningly hidden until now behind a piece of cardboard. She doesn’t even have a reason for visiting the mean murderer in the first instance – she just goes to see him. Because when you’re moving house and setting up a new business, that’s the thing you do first, isn’t it? After getting the utilities set up, obviously.

You’ll be wondering if she decides to move out of town once the killings start. Have a think about that one. 

Anyway, as well as the sheer lack of originality and terrible writing on display, we also face the low budget, low rent cast of the average co-prod. The almost entirely Canadian cast gets 10/10 on the Maple Syrup-ometer by containing not just one Being Erica alum in the former of McLaren, but also Erica herself, Erin Karpluk. But since cash apparently doesn’t stretch to having a dialect coach, most of them can’t even say ‘about’ without making it rhyme with ‘loot’. Meanwhile, I think McGrath manages to get out only one line in 10 without sounding like she’s auditioning for a remake of Father Ted. 

Like all those early originals for the Sci-Fi channel, TV Land et al, Slasher is unchallenging comfort food for its target audience. As the show’s web site says itself: “Slasher is a mystery/horror/thriller. Think Friday the 13th meets And Then There Were None.” It gives horror fans exactly what they want, which isn’t really things that horrify – it’s a list of tropes from every horror movie ever made that they can check off as they recognise them.

That set-up’s a bit Halloween. That punishment for sexual transgression must be Friday The 13th. That outfit looks a bit Hellraiser. That scene’s a bit like Silence of the Lambs.

Check, check, check, check.

However, as a piece of drama, rather than a pub quiz for horror nerds, it’s dismal. Just don’t go there. 

 

 

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, SundanceTV
In the UK: Thursdays (I’m guessing), Amazon Instant Video

When two actors who have starred in a TV show together are cast in a second show, generally it’s for one of two reasons:

1. Their pairing in the first show was very popular and the producers would like to recreate that chemistry
2. Individually, they’ve got good followings so together there’ll be two sets of fans watching.

Now, with the casting of James Purefoy and Michael K Williams in SundanceTV’s new 80s-set ‘swamp noir’ Hap and Leonard, I think we can eliminate option 1. About seven people watched The Philanthropist, in which billionaire playboy Purefoy has a Damascene conversion and decides to go around the world being a hands-on charity worker (albeit one with oodles of cash), protected in his endeavours by bodyguard Williams.

No one’s tuning in with the hope of seeing that chemistry recreated.

So that leaves option 2. But I’m still unsure that’s the answer.

Michael K Williams I get. He plays the eponymous Leonard, a black gay criminal with a penchant for guns and beating up the neighbourhood gangsters. If the casting agent hadn’t taken one look at the script and immediately said, “Hey, why don’t we get the guy who played Omar in The Wire?” I reckon that would have been grounds for instant dismissal.

Purefoy, though, is a bit of a mystery. Don’t get me wrong – I like Purefoy, I thought he was great in Rome and I’ve even spoken to him on occasion, when he seemed jolly nice and full of interesting opinions that I have outrageously quoted on many more occasions.

But he’s a public school-educated, Shakespearean actor. He’s not the first person said casting agent should immediately think of when trying to cast Hap, a white trash American from Texas who fought in Vietnam and who ends up committing crimes with his ex-wife (Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks) when he and Leonard lose their fruit-picking job to a bunch of illegal immigrants.

I just don’t get it.

I tell you what else I don’t get. Hap and Leonard, that’s what. Because I left that first episode thinking “WTF did I just watch?” and I’m not sure episode two clears things up any more for me.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Hap and Leonard 1×1-1×2 (US: SundanceTV; UK: Amazon Instant Video)”