Talamasca: The Secret Order

This wants to be a supernatural spy thriller but it lacks the power and the tension to pull it off. From premise to execution this isn’t a good show. From what I can tell the Talamasca are a background organisation in the Anne Rice novels. We’re told how all-encompassing and omnipresent they are but never shown it.

You got a vampire an exclusive apartment! You fostered the main character and paid his tuition! You have old buildings where people hand each other printed pages while frowning! In a world of vampires who can bend the minds of mortals, witches that can curse people across generations and ghosts that are a race of supernatural beings that’s not impressive. These are problems of property management and other embarrassingly mundane issues solved with money.

In episode one we’re introduced to the main character, Guy Anatole, who is a poor copy of Stephen Lack’s main character in David Cronenberg’s movie, Scanners. In Scanners Lack played a man burdened by extraordinary telepathic abilities in a world that feared him and wanted to exploit him. In Anne Rice’s universe nothing about Guy’s telepathy is extraordinary, but we’re supposed to engage with his mysterious backstory to believe he is extraordinary.

This uninspiring plot point is then welded to a spy show where every now and then some vampire will telepathically threaten Guy. Usually after a scene where he has collected an item sending him to the next plot location from a dead drop or put an item into a dead drop so someone else can examine what he has found. Spy work is dull. Gathering information and analysing it is dull. It’s peeping through keyholes, listening at doors, following people around to see who they meet and going through trash.

In episode two Guy gets a job as a barker outside a seedy strip club so he can keep an eye on the phone booth used to signal him to collect from a dead drop location. This goes on for minutes until he sees a council worker clearing off the advertisments posted on the phone booth and has to reclaim the signal from the council worker’s bin. Yes, it’s a sequence where the council worker takes action and pushes the story forward, not the protagonist.

Imagine a spy show where the spy organisation isn’t something those being spied on worry about. It’s clear this organisation isn’t strategically important and that’s how it survived so long in a world of supernatural forces. They are not worth crushing. Which means they’re not worth watching. Avoid.