Somewhat good, somewhat not.

kitellis-98121

Another in a long line of overwrought fantasies penned by sexually frustrated female novelists targeting an audience of vapid teenaged girls.

After a somewhat limp and bargain-basement pilot, featuring truly awful CGI wolves, the first season found its feet within three or four episodes and actually became quite good (for someone in the mood for this sort of show).

What kept me watching was the unique lack of teenagers in the cast, making the whole thing more grown-up and less of the mindless angst-fest that one is generally obliged to endure. The plot wasn't all about teenage melodrama either, and for the most part the supernatural elements were kept to a minimum, allowing for a more interesting story about the politics of werewolf culture. Despite an obviously restrictive budget it was really quite watchable.

Then season two arrived, and for reasons presumably book-based (I haven't read them), it abandoned the grown-up storytelling of the first season and plunged headfirst into a poor imitation of The Vampire Diaries, complete with teenagers (the annoying, pouty, petulant kind) and worse, witches, (and all the irritating chanting and writhing around in trances that modern depictions seem to demand).

The narrative, when not bogged down with prophecies (yawn), dream-sequences (yuck), dead-eyed cultists (mega-yawn), and, of course, objects floating around (oh, boy!), was all but abandoned in favour of teenaged girls writhing, grunting and whining through endless mind-numbing minutes, sometimes with white contact lenses (how original!)

Season three, by comparison, was a welcome relief, returning to less arcane storytelling. Focusing on politics, revenge, and mostly werewolf-based material (apart from a few lingering witchy threads), this was almost a good season. However, after the insults of season two I was unable to forgive the truly appalling writing and endless scenes of moronic expositional dialogue, and was very glad when it finally ended.

score 6/10

kitellis-98121 9 July 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4231377/