The world’s most clueless spy, working for the world’s most ineffective spy agency… what could go wrong?
Our guy has a problem: his name is Guy. This show’s lack of imagination only gets worse from there.
Guy has another problem: he can hear other people’s thoughts, but the universe conspires to put him in the presence of either so many people that telepathy is too painful to use, or one person who is specially trained or magically gifted to resist it, so he’s that supremely irritating type of protagonist who has an awesome superpower that is of no use ever.
As it turns out, Guy’s life has been watched and orchestrated by the secret order of the Talamasca, who recruit people like him to keep tabs on the hidden supernatural world. The theory is that collecting data on vampires, witches, ghosts and demons (the series is set in the same universe as Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches) will help normal humans keep a reasonably peaceful life alongside so many warring superhuman factions. The reality is that the magical police is incapable of keeping its own house in order and its hierarchy is a tangled mess of betrayal and backstabbing enabled by jaw-dropping incompetence.
Welcome to the worst spy agency I’ve seen since Get Smart.
Our guy Guy is played by a too distracting Nicholas Denton, who, in fairness, isn’t to blame for looking so much like the spitting image of Eddie Redmayne that one forgets to listen to what he’s saying—not that he has much to comment on, what with the absurd level of secrecy his boss likes to maintain. Said boss, who goes by Helen, is a veteran spy and a master of the art of posing dramatically and giving a knowing smile as a substitute for having anything useful to say.
Helen has been the one in charge of steering Guy’s life from behind the scenes, preparing him for the right time to recruit his psychic talents in the neverending mission of keeping humankind safe. Nevermind that she never does anything to earn Guy’s trust; every one of his questions gets slammed down with the promise that all will be revealed in due time, which I guess is intended to be in the middle of season 4.
Because there’s apparently an urgent crisis going on, Helen gives Guy a crash course in spycraft (inexplicably, the course doesn’t include a lesson on “Don’t Read Your Spy Textbook in Public Transportation”), and sends him on his own across the pond to listen to the thoughts of a powerful vampire who has infiltrated the British branch of the Talamasca. On his first day in London, Guy fails at basic spying and hooks up with the first woman who makes eyes at him. One has to wonder why the spy textbook didn’t cover this kind of scenario.
Guy is supposed to be provided with a mentor/handler, who is alarmingly absent during most of the mission, and when it’s finally time to go looking for the big bad vampire, Helen refuses to make any plan. She basically tells him, “You’re smarter than any plan I could give you. You’ll think of something.” With this dismal neglect from his superiors, it’s no wonder that he turns against the Talamasca at the first opportunity.
Even before that, he seems to devote more effort to spying on his boss than on the vampire. He has valid reasons to resent the ways the Talamasca has meddled in his life since childhood, and when he discovers that his mother was also some form of spy, and that she and the agency parted ways in bad terms, any hope of retaining his loyalty is lost. But the side he chooses instead cares even less for his personal gripes, his lack of experience, or his continued existence. At times I wondered whether this series was supposed to be a comedy, because Guy speedruns through one disastrously bad choice after another, somehow making it way past the point where he should have already been dismembered by vampires several times.
The show’s aim appears pointed at feeling mysterious rather than narrating a mystery. We’re told that the magic police has vast resources, but when they task a complete noob with undoing a vampire conspiracy, they don’t equip him with as much as a cove of garlic. We’re told that the world has vampires, witches, ghosts and demons, but we only ever see vampires, and in the rare scenes that feature a witch coven, they don’t do anything particularly witchy, so they may as well be a hippie commune. We’re told that the order is ancient and has tentacles everywhere, but across the season we meet at most the same half dozen top operatives, which gives the impression that we’re watching a school play with zero budget.
As for the mystery of the season, it’s admittedly a clever one, but getting there is an ordeal, even with just six episodes. Someone has destroyed the centuries-old archives of the Dutch branch of the Talamasca, which should severely cripple the order’s ability to keep tabs on the supernatural world, but we don’t see any serious consequence. Out of earshot of her colleagues, Helen has been searching for something called The 752, which sounds like the name of a chemical weapon, or a model of missile, or a limited edition comic book. Whatever it is, it has immense power, so it must not fall into the wrong yadda yadda, or else the world will yadda yadda. And it just so happens that the person closest to finding it is the same vampire our guy Guy has to follow. Neat!
Oh, have I already mentioned that the season’s two-part premiere has not one but two fridged women? You know, for extra drama.
I haven’t watched the TV adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, but the praise I’ve heard about it has been consistently enthusiastic. This spinoff, on top of being mediocre on its own merits, does a shameful disservice to a beloved story.
Nerd Coefficient: 4/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
