Posted by I love comedies, everyone knows this. I’m always looking for something that genuinely makes me laugh out loud, or at the very least, smile my way through it.
The premise here is that a few hundred years ago some vampires came to the “New World” to try and take it over… except they didn’t. They just sort of hung out in Staten Island doing not much of anything. This is an exploration of the night to night lives of vampires in the modern world… who are still stuck mentally in the 1400s.
I absolutely adored this. All aspects of it. I loved the writing. I loved the actor’s deliveries and timing, I love the music, and all the extra stuff in the background. It danced on the line between being too goofy and just the right amount of absurdity. This feels like the people behind The Office and Parks and Rec could have been behind it but it’s really Taika Waititi’s creation. There’s a lot of awkward moments and weird timing that’s just irresistibly funny to me. It’s also ‘mockumentary’ style comedy with the characters talking into the camera and divulging secrets. There’s an odd couple duo between the main lead vampire and his assistant/”familiar” who is just a normal mortal human. It reminds me of a lot of the Kif and Brannigan relationship if Kif hadn’t figured out he should hate Brannigan yet.
I absolutely fucking love the “energy” vampire they have in this. Collin Robinson is a psychic vampire or an energy vampire and he feeds off people’s energy… leaving them miserable. He’s the guy in the office who just speaking to for five minutes can send you over the edge and leave you feeling tired. They are “daywalkers”, the most common type of vampire, and can drain even other vampires of their energy. It’s a running joke throughout the show with this guy murmuring to people in the background about the most mundane, horrifyingly boring conversation that we’re all familiar with.
There are some really neat cameos that come in later like Kristen Schaal, Wesley Snipes, Danny Trejo, Evan Rachel Wood, Tilda Swinton and more.
This is something you can put on and kind of turn your brain off. You can if you want, leave it on as background noise. A lot of the jokes/funny shit is in how lines are delivered and not necessarily things you need to watch to ‘get’. You may miss some of the more subtle things in the background, but you won’t be lost in the storyline.
I don’t think you would need to watch more than one or two episodes to know if you’re going to like it or not. It’s not one of those shows I’d say that “just watch the first season and see how you feel at the end”. I think how you feel after 2 episodes or so is how you’d feel by the end – it is what it is from the very start.
My scores are typically lower than the IMDB score… but this time I’m well above it because this was a show was just made for me… I was the ideal audience, lol. It’s coming back in April and I can’t fucking wait!
My Score: 9/10