TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 1

TV #34 of 2022:

What We Do in the Shadows, season 1

A confident launch to a mockumentary sitcom with the simple yet irresistible premise of several vampires sharing a house in Staten Island. (I haven’t seen the movie that preceded this, but I understand it follows a different set of characters and isn’t directly related.) The storytelling is very shaggy, and rivaling Quentin Tarantino or Game of Thrones not merely for gore but also for how death can suddenly end — or at least radically reorient — a previously dominant plot concern. Indeed, the only major thread lasting throughout this first season is of put-upon familiar Guillermo meekly chafing under his master’s absurd demands and continued refusal to turn him into one of the undead.

Of course, the main appeal of any comedy is the jokes, and we certainly get that in the overlapping categories of oblivious culture-clash struggles, gross-out humor, and inventive descriptions of sexual depravity. There’s also a delightful recurring bit that I never tire of, where one of the protagonists yells out, “Bat!” every time he turns into a bat. It’s utterly inane, yet hilarious nonetheless. And I love the ‘energy vampire’ played by Mark Proksch of Better Call Saul fame, even though I think his inclusion in the group was funnier before the reveal that he really does have supernatural abilities to that effect and is not just a total buzzkill that the others have mistaken for a peer.

I don’t want to give away all the clever parts, but bringing in certain actors who have appeared as vampires on screen before for some glorified cameo work in one episode here is truly inspired. With moments like that and everything discussed above, I am wholly on board, though I do hope for a little more in the way of structure and character arcs going forward.

★★★★☆

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