The Watch, the new BBC America sci-fi/fantasy/crime series based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, truly benefits from having a two-episode premiere.
The first hour/first episode ‘A Near Vimes Experience,’ starts off with a fairly interesting premise. Sam Vimes (Richard Dormer aka Berric Dondarrion of Games of Thrones), a Captain Jack Sparrow-esque “Chief of the Watch,” is rewatching the last 24 hours of his life with a wonderfully gothic and droll Death (voiced by Wendell Pierce of The Wire). Death and Vimes have this crackling chemistry, thanks largely to Pierce’s brilliant deadpan reactions to literally everything Vimes says.
Yet, after this intriguing opening, the audience is bounced around an episode that struggles to find a tone. Instead of building up this wild world of guilds, dragons, monsters and crime, we’re treated to an episode that is too desperate to create a vibe for the series. Watch the trailer for the series and you will see what The Watch is going for — to be this edgy, grimy, unflinching, punk-tinged fantasy series. Instead, this feels like a bad punk tribute. Just because people have dirty clothes and you play a couple punk anthems in the background, does not make you edgy, grimy, unflinching or punk.
This desperation to create the series vibe is so forced and artificial that it shoves the interesting part of the episode — the weird characters of The Watch — to the outskirts. We’re left to assume a lot about these characters, who on paper, seem to be super interesting. Literally, you have a giant rock humanoid as a member of the team, why not discuss him … at all? Unfortunately, when the episode does focus on characters, it’s predominantly the super buttoned-up Constable Carrot (Adam Hugill, 1917). Focusing on the most serious character in the show is a big huge bucket of cold water on the episode, and you find yourself waiting for their scenes, with dialogue cobbled together from every procedural ever, to mercifully end.
Luckily, the series finds its footing at the very end of this episode. This is when The Watch starts to lean into its mythology and its world. It also allows Richard Dormer to actually perform instead of doing a bad impression of Johnny Depp from 15 years ago. We see his hurt, we understand him more, and Dormer gets a massive emotional moment at the end when one of his team sacrifices themselves for him. This moment is wonderfully juxtaposed by Pierce’s aggravated Death.
Now, had the premiere ended there — there’s no way this reviewer would even think about continuing on with the series. It wasn’t that strong of an ending to bring me back for the rest of the season. However, what the series does brilliantly is sew the two episodes together like an old “TV movie premiere” that dramas would often do. You never feel like there’s a distinctive break between ‘A Near Vimes Experience’ and Episode 2, ‘Ook.’ This is smart because ‘Ook’ naturally builds off everything that works about the end of that first episode and delivers 60 minutes of an almost completely different and radically more interesting show.
This 60 minutes, as previously stated, really delves into the world of the series which is absolutely fascinating to understand, especially since we’re dropped into a time when the world is on the verge of complete chaos and violence. There’s more of a plot to this episode where we see The Watch trying to discover how and why a sacred book was stolen from Unseen University — the center of learning and magic in this world. By focusing on the intricacies of this fantastical world we, in turn, learn a great deal of how The Watch and the characters in it exist. Their emotional scars are revealed naturally, but we are never brought to any sort of dour or depressing moment. Also, that weird and dysfunctional chemistry the series so desperately tried to create in the first episode, finally comes out in oddly sweet and genuine moments between tears and violence.
Most importantly, the comedy becomes way less physical in the first act and much more verbal and dryly British. This is mainly because Vimes is not literally stumbling around drunkenly doing pratfalls for laughs and we get quick wit and a ridiculous (but welcome) running joke about a wizard who makes the sound of a trumpet when he attempts to swear. It’s silly, but more of what you’d expect from a British series.
Ultimately, The Watch is a series that is going to be a hard sell for audiences. It kicks off with an extremely rough first episode that’s barely watchable (no pun intended) until the final fifteen minutes. Then the audience is treated to what the show really is, and it’s actually pretty good. It’s not the edgy, punk rock fantasy series it wants to portray itself as, but it is a fantastical series about misfits coming together to save the world, deal with their emotional baggage, and crack a few jokes at the same time. If you can make it through the first 45 minutes of the premiere, you might just discover a fun, intriguing new series worth checking out on the weekly.
The Watch airs Sunday nights on BBC America and is currently streaming on AMC+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-ljMM_EeM
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