What We Do In The Shadows

My regular readers and fact fans will notice that this is Just One More Episode’s fourth foray into the world of vampires.  Like any normal adult man, I’ve talked about my enjoyment of The Vampire Diaries, graduating to the more sexually explicit world of True Blood, while my writing on seeing things from the opposite perspective (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) remains one of my most read instalments (though it still trails Love Island and, er, Naked Attraction).  Following on from a pal’s successful recommendation to open myself up to the life-enhancing entertainment quality of Succession I’ve taken the lad up on his ongoing insistence I would really enjoy What We Do In The Shadows.  And I did.

It’s a mockumentary sitcom, but make it vampire.  Spun off from a film I’ll never get around to seeing, the show’s genesis can be credited to Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement who, along with Taika Waititi, asked himself that age-old question: wouldn’t it be LOLs if a load of vampires had to live together as housemates?  Wouldn’t it be even funnier if they were centuries old and therefore constantly at odds with modern life?  What if they had been sent to conquer North America from the old country but had only got as far as Staten Island?  Well, I can tell you now: it would be a right old chuckle.  So, let’s meet our line-up of co-tenants:

Nandor The Relentless

Head of the household thanks to his seniority in age, Nandor has moved on from pillaging and marauding on behalf of the Ottoman Empire (you never hear much about them these days, do you?) and now cultivates a more sensitive soul, calling house meetings to recap on hygiene standards.  His accent is everything, with Kayvan Novak elasticating his vowels beyond all recognition.

Laszlo Cravensworth

Matt Berry serves up a hearty portion of delicious Matt Berry as this lascivious, yet limited, Laszlo.  Toast Of London intonation is channelled throughout, so I always raise an eyebrow whenever he shouts bat as he transforms into a bat.  For a brief spell, he is Jackie Daytona, and it is wonderful.

Nadja

Billed third because the world still hates women, Nadja is actually the funniest vampire in our coven.  Her eurotrash accent elevates her every outburst to a new level of farcical indignation, thanks to Natasia Demetriou’s vocal dexterity (which also makes her one of the top guests of all time on The Adam Buxton Podcast).  Every time she slags something off with English that is ever so fractionally non-idiomatic, the linguist in me thrills at her silliness.

Guillermo

The vampires’ human familiar, this poor lad acts as a household slave while waiting (ten years and counting) for his chance to fulfil a lifetime ambition (prompted by Antonio Banderas) of joining the clan of Nosferatu.  Contrasting with how little his masters appreciate him is a growing realisation that his calling may be complicated by his genetic heritage (and I don’t mean his Hispanic roots) which leads to some hilariously clever slapstick action.

Colin Robinson

A different strain of vampire that can walk in the daylight, Colin is a pure bore because he feeds on human energy rather than blood.  He’s the office creep stealing your time with tedious chatter, draining you of your life force in the process.  As a comic creation he is genius and his workplace scenes are my favourite, especially when he encounters a worthy adversary in the form of an emotional vampire.  I love how much he annoys the other housemates, even from his dreary basement bedroom.  When he learns to online troll as a form of remote energy drainage you start to question how fictional he really is.  In fact, I think we’ve all worked with a few Colins.

A platter of comedic big names crop up across the two series, but Beanie Feldstein deserves a special mention as an outrageously naïve college student who gets caught up in Nadja’s manipulations.  Throughout, the classic tropes of the genre are mined for comedy, from staying out of the sun to wooden stakes, via garlic, silver and countless occasions of hissing like cats at each other.  Luckily, there seems to be US dosh behind the special effects, with no expense spared on CGI shenanigans.  That said, I’m always most transfixed by the backstories whenever these are expanded upon, as the supporting illustrations that scroll by look like genuine historical artefacts, reminding us all that medieval religious art is whack.  My only slight frown, as a vampire purist, is that I’m not sure how I feel about the genre’s lore being played for laughs when it normally takes itself very seriously.  But, as always, silliness wins out, making What We Do In The Shadows a rollicking gothic romp of a contribution to the fangs-on-fangs canon.

True Blood

I’m serving up second week of vampire goodness, following on from my last post about The Vampire Diaries, as I’ve decided that vampires are the opposite of Christmas.  Even though the big day might now be in the past, anything I can do to accelerate its rapid disappearance in the rear-view mirror is to be commended.  And while The Vampire Diaries’ PG-rated light snogging and minimal gore might have felt (deliberately) unseasonal, True Blood’s definitive shag-fest and graphic blood-splurging should be the nail in the coffin (as it were) of this festive period.

We’re all clear on the fact that anything supernatural is a trigger theme for me.  But True Blood laced its vampires in with so much more that it was by and large a foregone conclusion that I would work my way into this boxset and swiftly devour all seven seasons.  I’m not sure where it was broadcast in the UK (and I’m too lazy to check) but I made my way through the various DVD discs as and when they came from Lovefilm, back in the day when Netflix was just a thing you thought that wouldn’t take off because internet connections weren’t fast enough.

True Blood’s true charm comes from its Southern setting.  And not just the Deep South, but deepest Louisiana.  We’re talking down by the bayou here.  Strangely, it seems like a great place for vampires, with the voodoo and Cajun influences making hokey pokey all that more realistic.  Perhaps if you’re used to looking out for alligators in the dark, then checking around for one additional cold-blooded predator isn’t too much of a reach.  The first season even had a Cajun-accented character as its antagonist (spoiler alert) and as a languages geek I couldn’t get enough.  That said, I would cite accents as one of the show’s weaker points.  While all our visual cues vividly bring to life the swamp mist and superstition of rural Louisiana, the international cast have varying levels of success in wrapping their chops credibly around the dialect.  Leading lady, Anna Paquin, never quite convinces as Sookie Stackhouse’s southern belle, while Stephen Moyer, a native of Essex, chewed his way around Bill Compton’s confederate gent (an oxymoron of course).  Throw in an Australian as Sookie’s brother and you’ll be unable to do anything but cringe each time one of them mentions the name of the town at the heart of True Blood’s goings on: Bon Temps.  Thing is, you’re saying it wrong as well.  Probably.

Fairly unique in its setting, then, (at least in my boxset experience), True Blood gained itself greater suspension of disbelief when it whipped out its key premise in episode one: vampires have always lived among us, but events have finally unfolded in a way that allows them to come out (of the coffin, arf arf) and live in the open.  A synthetic form of their fave tipple, Tru Blood, means they no longer have to prey on human arteries.  Therefore, the integration of this centuries-old myth into modern society comes along like just another tale of a minority group looking for the same rights as the majority.  And we all know that the Southern states of the US aren’t the best place for this.  Cue dramatic tension on all levels, from inter-family up to full societal.  True Blood seems to ape everything: rights activists, religious zealots, politicians, local law enforcement, pressure groups, lobbyists and anything else that’s been a bit shonky.

But, as we all know, the struggle between man and vampire isn’t enough (see previous posts on Buffy, Teen Wolf etc).  Before long, we’ve got werewolves, witches, shape-shifters and various other demons, giving many of the sprawling ensemble cast further reasons to get involved in the action and, more often than not, take their clothes off.  Funniest of all, there are faeries (whose clothes also get popped off).  And this is because, no matter what supernatural heritage a particular character may or may not have, True Blood hammers home the universal truth that people are horny bastards, drenching its camp action in oodles of sex.  It’s clear everyone has taken their role preparation seriously by smashing the gym hard in advance, so it’s not half bad to look at and also occasionally has things to do with the actual plot.  Sure, there’s body positivity in a range of shapes and sizes, but the sex positivity is mostly displayed by those who’ve been off the carbs.

It’s a show whose opening credits prepare you perfectly for what’s about to come: it’s a sexy mess that veers on being a danger wank, but you can’t stop looking.  Based on some books I’ve never read, True Blood is coming at you this Christmas with a firm recommendation.  It’s highly sexed, highly stylised, and highly entertaining.  If you like your humour dark and bloody, you characters feisty and spunky, and your vampires shackled down by politicking bureaucracy, True Blood will arouse your emotions in a fistful of different ways with every episode you subject your eyes to.  It’s going to do bad things to you.

The Vampire Diaries

Right, well it’s been 37 posts since we’ve had anything about vampires, so I thought I might as well chuck the old classic show Vampire Diaries into the mix.  I haven’t finished a boxset in a while, and it seems readers can’t get enough of teen fodder from our younger years (I’m looking at you, everyone who read about Gossip Girl), so why not?  Let me, as a 33-year-old man, write about a show aimed at teenage girls, that I mostly watched when I was a 20-something-year-old man.  And then you can read it and, together, we can all take a quick break from the monstrous season that is Christmas time.  If, like me, you’ve looked on in disgust while office co-workers shovel a month’s worth of advent chocolate into their gobs on a single day, or you’ve had to restrain someone physically from cracking out the festive playlist on Spotify before the end of November, then really ‘tis the season for the bloodsucking undead as an antidote to empty yuletide greetings at the end of every email.

On paper, Vampire Diaries is an exercise in ticking almost every box regarding my preferred televisual themes.  It’s set in an American high school, so all the characters get to hang out in front of lines of lockers on an impossibly glamorous campus, in stark contrast to my old school, the misleadingly posh-monikered Howard of Effingham, where lesson changeovers were characterised by bundles, high-up banister daredevilry and acne.  So far, so much escapism.  Secondly, we have the supernatural.  As if the pressures of growing up in this day and age weren’t enough, imagine having to cope in the midst of budding relationships with vampires.  Gripping plotlines ensue as we join the main characters in navigating such pitfalls as: being allergic to the sun, being thirsty for blood, and, of course, being evil.  Ah, them teenage years.

My cursory research reveals that we have eight series of this show to enjoy, but I really don’t think for a minute I got too far past season six.  Back in 2009, I probably made appointments to view the show at obscure hours on ITV2, but then I also recall various DVDs arriving on my Lovefilm subscription.  Sure, the initial premise of the opening series was gripping.  High-schooler Elena falls for handsome classmate Stefan Salvatore, only to find out he’s a vampire.  We’ve all done it, right?  Luckily, he has a conscience to balance out his murderous tendencies, but his cheeky brother, our Damon (played by a chap who was offed in the first series of Lost), is not burdened by such inconveniences.  His every crack is so wise that his dialogue eventually makes your skin crawl.  And wait, both brothers are so handsome that even after they’ve murdered you, you’ll still get lost in their eyes.  I assume the high school purged all of its students with below average looks in a public burning.  You can’t blame them.  Each episode seemed to culminate in an event in the beleaguered town of Mystic Falls (should have guessed, really) a bit like The OC, only the tension came not from social faux pas caused by the intermingling of the classes, but from the unleashing of bloody hell when some demon or rascal attacks the town and, mostly, the school.

Of course, to give the whole thing legs, the vampires were soon joined by other creatures.  Elena’s bestie gets into witchcraft.  You’ve got some werewolves in there, some hunters, some original vampires (cue spinoff) and many more.  Buffy The Vampire Slayer, anyone?  But then, a few series in, we flesh out plot contrivance to a whole new level with the arrival of the doppelgängers.  Suddenly, we don’t know if we’re dealing with lovely Elena, or Katherine, her naughty naughty twin.  Then we start swapping back and forth between which brother has a conscience and which brother is evil.  The plots wind themselves up more tightly until all the cast can do is frown in order to understand them.  As with Teen Wolf, complexity is mistaken for intrigue and the sheer volume of storyline becomes overwhelming.  And I don’t remember seeing a diary at any point beyond the first few episodes either, but Elena must have had her hands full diddling about with both brothers.  So I dialled out.

That’s not to say I don’t regret my decision.  This was a sexy show and, for a time, it filled an inexplicable need of mine to be consuming some sort of vampire content.  But ain’t nobody got time for plots that tie themselves in too many knots.  The Vampire Diaries only finished in early 2017 and who knows how it ended.  Maybe the doppelgängers got their own twins and inflicted triplegängers on a confused audience (this happened) or the leading lady was absent for whole series (this also happened).  Either way, I still have unrealistic expectations that vampires will enter my day-to-day life.  I’ll keep a beady eye out at the office for sure, but chances are it will be too busy casting withering glances at my Christmas-enjoying colleagues to spot the real bloodsuckers.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

If you look at a 12-year-old these days (just in an observational way, not in an Operation Yewtree way), they always seem so together.  Stylish clothes, loves a camera lens, down to the last ten in The X Factor, full of confidence and dreams.  When I was this age, I was an awkward mess of a human being.  I used to refuse to brush my hair and parade around in a fleece and a retainer.  I was so keen at school that I often illustrated my school exercise books with lovingly shaded crayon sketches, such was my addiction to House Points.  So, the sudden appearance of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in my life could not have been more timely.

At first, I thought it was a stupid name.  Buffy.  Everyone I knew was called Laura or Sarah or Robert.  There were four Matthews in my class.  But, then again, nobody would have paid attention to Gemma The Vampire Slayer.  And pay attention we did.  We’re talking 1997 here, way before our slavery to TV scheduling was anywhere near an end.  That 6.45pm slot on BBC2 every Thursday was convenient to nobody (I’ve already explained about my Dad pretending to know how to work the VCR) so we all had to spend the fourth day of the week at school buzzing to rush home and get ready to wait a few hours for the show to come on.  Thursday was already an epic day as it was supermarket (Sainsbury’s) shop day in our household (and to this day I can still only have food from Sainsbury’s).  Life goals were a Goodfellas pizza followed by our choice from the patisserie counter AND a treat yoghurt that was more chocolate than dairy product.

As I got older, I’d make plans with friends to pile round one of our houses and watch the show together.  This felt like the right thing to do, as we were desperate to have others engage in our enthusiasm, but it was always immediately regrettable.  Our excitement would translate into not being able to keep quiet and concentrate during each episode, constantly shushing each other and then forgetting and making our own comments out loud.  We’d miss crucial dialogue and plot points and rue the decision to share the viewing experience.  In some ways, it was a precursor of the Whatsapp group chat that you try to participate in while chunking through a boxset, ending up stuck in a limbo between ever getting fully to grips with either.  Yes, you’re a terrible person.

But what did I love about it?  Firstly, I always loved something set in a high school.  Secondly, another favourite theme of mine is the supernatural.  Thirdly, the perfect combination of points one and two leaves us with something that really was a bit of me.  It’s probably what’s led me, even in recent times, to my embarrassing viewership of Teen Wolf.  Buffy was a teenager, and I was becoming one myself.  I didn’t have to slay vampires, but I did have to survive a British comprehensive school.  Buffy and her friends also spoke only in ironic witticisms, cleverly playing with words and engaging in what would later become known as banter.  A bit like Friends, people hadn’t spoken like this before, though it didn’t translate that well into my Surrey playground experience.  I tried to ask someone what their “childhood trauma” was and got sent out the classroom.  Sorry, sir.

There are seven series out there.  Buffy and her friends evolve, grow and develop into young adults.  They have the angst of killing demons compounded by the angst of having to go off to university.  Controversially, I’m not sure their adventures stand up to re-watching.  I keep spotting the show in the EPG plastered across the SyFy channel, but it looks like each episode was filmed through a pinhole camera, as the aspect leaves acres of blank space on the screen, which does nothing to make you want to watch a randomly selected instalment halfway through, especially when Netflix is offering you the eyeball-caressing supernatural effects of Stranger Things.  What’s worse, their clever dialogue now seems unoriginal and dated.

But, Buffy still has a very firm place in my heart.  It taught me how great and significant TV could be.  I tingled every time the theme tune came on.  When Blondie released Maria and Capital FM played it 200 times a day, 1999 became a very tingly year, as the opening chords of that song sounded exactly like Buffy’s theme tune.  I even used to read my episode guide (entitled the Watcher’s Guide, obviously) while a poster of Buffy looked down on me from my bedroom wall.  I totally could have been a Watcher as I am very English, still quite awkward, and enjoy being in libraries.

The Buffyverse’s vampires look exactly like humans until faced with blood or aggression.  Instantly, their fangs emerge and their foreheads crease into a much angrier and more monstrous expression.  Oddly, this is exactly what happens to me every time I get hungry at work, so the programme really is extremely easy to identify with.  But as much as the vampires and demons brought the edge and the action, it was Buffy’s pals, the Scooby Gang, that held the story arcs together (even though I inexplicably hated that term for their group).  Here, I shall go right through some of them while wilfully leaving out others:

Xander

I’ve slowly realised that I only ever found his wiseguy rapid speech quite irritating.  He was either pining with unrequited love or balls deep in a relationship, and that’s fair enough really.  I was never jealous of his hair, which is a key factor for me in male TV characters.

Willow

As I reflect, I again wonder if her cutesy act was a bit annoying.  It wasn’t at the time, but I’m much more impatient these days.  And, of course, I can only ever hear phrases combining brass instruments with female sexual organs whenever I see Alyson Hannigan.

Cordelia

100% sass and a great foil to Buffy, so it was a shame she was in so few series.

Faith

Not really a full member, as she was a sort of rival slayer that sprung up due to an admin error at slayer head office.  Somehow, she was more bad-ass than Buffy.  Whatever happened to Eliza Dushku?  I wish I could be bothered to Google.  Most importantly, she went on to star in Bring It On, a film I promise I have never seen and from which I cannot recite lines of script extensively.

Giles

The best librarian ever.  As with all British actors in American shows, he sounded like an American doing a bad accent, but I believe he has been knighted for his services to tweed blazers.

Spike

Now this really was an awful English accent.  I felt like he got more attention in later series simply by hanging around and waiting for his time to shine.

Buffy

What a lead.  Everyone could find a way to connect with Buffy.  Her whole life was a big “why me?” moment.  But then Sarah Michelle Gellar tried to shake off her teen image in Cruel Intentions, and as that saliva strand was drawn out between her lips and Selma Blair’s, a little piece of my childhood died.  A childhood that involved tingling at the thought of a show where teenagers shoved stakes in the hearts of their classmates.

By writing this, I’ve added nothing to the existing reams of fan discussion about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  I’ve probably angered some core fans, which isn’t my intention.  What this proves, if anything, is that, twenty years later, the awkward 12-year-old is now an awkward 32-year-old.  Whereas, twenty years later, Buffy is still a show remembered so fondly and whose legacy still has such enormous influence, that I am merely a failed nostalgic who is holding classic TV answerable to modern standards.  And you’re reading it…