‘The joke’s on you, dickheads!’ 

I’ll get this out of the way right now, I’m a huge fan of the Child’s Play franchise. One of the highlights of my life as a genre journo was interviewing both Tom Holland and Alex Vincent with my better half Marie for Voices in the Dark. I even quite liked the 2019 reboot for what it was, a fun 90 minutes of mayhem. If, however, you’re firmly in the camp who hated that movie, then you’re going to adore the new series of Chucky, which sees not only the original creator of everyone’s favourite ‘Friend Till the End’, Don Mancini, taking back the reins but also Brad Dourif returning as the voice of our potty-mouthed titular anti-hero.

Our location is the appropriately-named Hackensack (or perhaps it should be slash?), birthplace of notorious serial killer Charles Lee Ray – which if you know your Child’s Play lore will definitely ring a bell. Spotting a rather familiar Good Guy Doll at a yard sale, teenager Jake Wheeler (The 5th Wave’s Zackary Arthur) quickly snaps him up and takes him home – planning on using it in one of his sculptures. Jake’s mom was also an artist, but his ‘too fond of the booze’ mechanic father Luke (Devon Sawa, Alex from the original Final Destination) is less than keen. What doesn’t help is Jake’s Uncle Logan, Luke’s twin brother (also Sawa) making comparisons with his own over-achiever son, Junior (Ratched’s Teo Briones). Already struggling with being gay in high school – he has an unrequited crush on True Crime podcaster Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson) – and having to deal with braindead bullies, Jake now has a psychotic doll to contend with as well.

The first episode of Chucky sets all of this up beautifully. We get the angst of being an outsider fourteen year-old without going overboard. We’re introduced to all the characters who’ll inevitably become important over the coming weeks – and especially a brief phone cameo from someone you might recognise, enquiring after seeing the doll for sale online. Plus we get some terrific, dare I say, classic Chucky moments: his encounters with Jake’s cat; the frog dissection; a stalkery moment when he’s left alone with Junior’s obnoxious girlfriend, Lexy (The Young and the Restless’ Alyvia Alyn Lind); the ventriloquist turn at the school talent show; and the outrageous kill at the end which rivals anything seen before in a Child’s Play flick.

The framing device hints at future drip-feed flashbacks, too, as the song in the show tells us ‘No-one ever starts out that way, but this is how villains are made.’ Like Jake’s tastes, this feels both retro and incredibly fresh; an old favourite reborn, injecting a shot in the arm into the mythos. As a fan of the film series, I was in seventh heaven and I can’t wait to see where it goes next!

 ‘Jesus, another frickin’ doll!’ 9/10                              

Paul Kane