Acorn Media International, out now on DVD

 ‘Bad people ought to be punished!’ 

Based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Joe Hill, this ambitious TV show took the jumping-off point of a very unusual vampire driving around in his car snatching children, and expanded upon it to create two seasons before it was eventually cancelled. But do the changes make the show better or worse than the source material?

In the opening episode, we see an ageing Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto from Heroes and Star Trek) up to his usual tricks; kidnapping – or as he sees it, saving – a child called Danny (Asher Miles Fallica) from his single mother, who is more interested in her lover than looking after her kid. Manx’s aim, as always, is to take these charges to ‘Christmasland’: a magical place where Wizard would have a field day, because it actually is Christmas every day! The unfortunate side-effect of the journey in a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the titular number plate, however, is that the children begin to change into monsters – while Manx starts to get younger and younger.

Danny’s kidnapping brings Manx to the attention of a psychic librarian called Maggie (In the Dark’s Jahkara Smith), who can reach into a bag and bring out Scrabble tiles that help her figure out what’s going on. This, in turn, brings Maggie into contact with our main protagonist Victoria ‘Vic’ McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings from The Goldfinch): an eighteen-year-old with dysfunctional working-class parents, who wants nothing more than to escape small-town Haverhill, Mass, and get to art college to make something of herself. Like Maggie, though, Vic has a talent – in her case she can ride her bike across an imaginary bridge and find things that are lost.

It’s a skill which might just help them both locate the missing children, including a little girl Vic knows called Haley (Darby Camp). But it’s also something that will see them both on Manx’s radar, who is more dangerous than ever now that he’s convinced man mountain Bing Partridge (Emerald City’s Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) to be his new henchman. So, as if the usual teenage troubles aren’t enough – dealing with boys, an alcoholic father (Ebon Moss-Bachrach from The Punisher) and a mother she just doesn’t see eye-to-eye with (Mr Mercedes’ Virginia Kull) – Vic now finds herself facing a supernatural threat. Someone who wants to steal her power and perhaps take her to Christmasland too, so she can be a mother to the monster-kids… It all culminates in a showdown at the end of season one, where it looks like Manx might be down for the count – if you’ll pardon the expression. But you know how things are with vampires…

Moving into season 2 and we have a time skip of eight years, which sees Vic becoming a parent herself and Christmasland destabilised because of the events in the first series. We find out more about Manx’s back-history, how he came by the Wraith car, and even what he was like as a kid himself, plus we get to know his daughter Millie Manx (Mattea Conforti) – the leader of the monster children – much better. There’s also more about the place Manx keeps visiting that looks like a roadside bar, but is yet another imaginary construct, plus a new villain in the form of the ‘Hourglass Man’ (a chilling turn from Channel Zero’s Paul Schneider), who can make people do exactly what he wants. It’s all heading towards an explosive climax which again sees Maggie and Vic pitted against their old enemy.

To answer the question from before about whether this show is better than the book, or whether the changes help or hinder, it definitely depends on how you look at it. They’re very different beasts for sure, and what’s on the page and imagined always tends to be more scary than whatever you put on screen. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed both seasons and loved the way we got to know all the characters over quite a length of time. A show like this stands and falls on its performances, though, and I’m happy to report that all the cast are outstanding; Cummings is especially impressive, lost and defeated one minute and coming out scrapping the next. Quinto too is a perfect Manx, someone who sees himself as the hero of his own story.

The same goes for the production values, with the special effects top notch – you’ll believe in Christmasland just as much as everyone else does – and make-up superb. Add to this, there are countless nods towards a certain Mr King’s work, from the use of the Carmody surname to a frozen maze. It’s a crying shame we won’t get to see any more episodes, but it does kinda leave us in a place where we won’t be tearing our hair out if we don’t.

In terms of extras in this box set, for season one we have an overview which includes interviews with the likes of Joe Hill (‘Nightmares and horror fiction take what’s reassuring and infect it’), showrunner Jami O’Brien (‘Manx loves children, but hates mothers!’), Ashleigh Cummings and co-executive producer Tom Brady (‘There’s nothing scarier than feeling unsafe in your own home’). There’s also a ‘Meet the Characters’ featurette where we hear from some of the above and also Virginia Kull (‘Vic and her mother love each other deeply and cannot communicate it’), Quinto (‘The car is a character in and of itself!’), Ólafsson (‘At some level I think he knows what they’re doing isn’t right’) and Jahkara Smith (‘Vic and Maggie are great together’). There’s a ‘Making of…’ in which we hear from production designer Andrew Jackness (‘We were working in two very different worlds, the fantasy world and the real world’), VFX supervisor John Bruno (‘The role of visual effects here was to bring Joe Hill’s vision to life’), SFX make-up supervisor Joel Harlow who created Manx’s look, plus ‘head of hair’ Cheryl Daniels and costume designer Sonu Mishra. Hill goes into more detail about the adaption in another featurette next, then we hear about the ‘Rules of NOS4A2’, plus we get the fun ‘Joe Hill’s Themes and Inspirations’ (‘The elephant in the room is my dad, he’s written a few books too…’) – including a comparison of Manx with Knight Rider – and his ‘Show and Tell’ where we’re taken round his office and shown things that fans have sent over the years.

Extras for the second series are less, but include ‘A Look At Season Two’ where we get Mattea Conforti’s take on Manx’s kid (‘She’s a very big character in this season’), ‘Catching Up With the Characters’ (Ashleigh Cummings: ‘Charlie Manx broke Vic… She feels like she’s damaged’) including relatively new ones Lou (Jonathan Langdon) and Tabitha (Ashley Romans), and a closer look at ‘The Origins of Charlie Manx’ (Quinto: ‘We’re once again reminded of the inextricable connection between Manx and the Wraith itself’)  All in all, lots of entertainment for your buck!

Verdict: ‘What kind of monster do you take me for?’ 9/10            

Paul Kane