TV #35 of 2021:
Lovecraft Country, season 1
This series requires a major content warning for everything from domestic abuse to jump scares to homophobia to gore, but first and foremost for racism in practically all of its vile and violent forms. As I noted in my 2017 review of the title it’s loosely adapting, “Jim Crow was a time of horror for black Americans, which makes it a natural fit for this novel about an extended black family coming up against the sorts of cosmic nightmares written about by H.P. Lovecraft… [who] was also an infamous racist, so there’s an element of reclaiming his narratives here” as well. That parallel remains inspired and fruitful for dramatic impact, but it is so much more visceral an experience to see the lynch mobs and other acts of mid-century bigotry play out on-screen. Tread carefully if you think you might be at all sensitive to that sort of subject matter.
The TV writers have done a fine job of tightening up this narrative, but they maintain the key insight of the original text, which is that a sundown town would be just as scary as a vampire, and just as serious a threat for someone encountering them both together. All manner of Lovecraftian weirdness goes on in this tale, from arcane rituals to unknowably monstrous beings outside the universe, but it generally sounds an accompanying tempo to the everyday terror facing our protagonists, rather than standing out as the prime focus. Or really, it’s all meshed into one omnipresent danger, where a warlock is as deadly for his twisted powers as for his white skin in our society.
It’s a powerfully thought-provoking piece of storytelling, and although it sometimes falters in terms of legible plot and character motivations beyond pure survival — and often succumbs to that variety of nihilism endemic to the horror genre, which can seem to glorify a body count for its own sake without any real hope for agentive heroism to defy it — the ideas and the visuals alike are striking. Whether due to COVID considerations or because they’ve already used most of the material from the book in this debut year, HBO has still neither officially renewed or canceled the program. But the network has made something special here, and it would be great to see where they could take the concept next.
★★★★☆
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