Before he found mainstream success with Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi was perhaps best known for co-directing the cult hit mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows. An extremely deadpan look at the lives of vampires living in modern day New Zealand, it was a critical hit and helped bring Waititi some measure of fame and success. And now that he has a great deal more, that cult hit has been turned into a TV show on FX. Produced by Waititi and his co-director Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), with many episodes directed or written by one of the pair, it’s a chance for the two Kiwis to bring the full force of their off-kilter sense of humor to America.
Right away, they avoid the pitfall of matching an adaptation too closely to the source. The show takes the concept and sensibility of the movie and transplants it into Staten Island with a new cast and new plot. This allows them to use everything that works about the movie without committing themselves to certain events or risk trodding too heavily on old ground. It would be easy to spend the first few episodes just redoing the movie, so the decision to take it in a different direction is admirable.
Much of the charm of the movie has been successfully transplanted into this new medium too. Our new crop of vampires — Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) are all fully committed to their ridiculous characters. These roles require total self-seriousness; even a hint of irony in the performance would significantly reduce the fun. Thankfully all three of them find the core of these characters, and watching them snipe at each other and wax poetically about their past lives is a delight.
The show, like the movie, also knows how to strategically deploy its budget. Moments that can be silly or look a bit cheap, such as whenever they turn into bats or when Laszlo and Nadja decide to aerially kidnap a man from a park, are turned into good jokes. But when it matters, they can produce some genuinely impressive effects. Doug Jones’ appearance as The Baron, a Nosferatu-style vampire, is especially noteworthy for looking fantastic.
One can’t help but wonder how long this premise can really sustain itself, though. The mockumentary format, not frequently used in film, plays much differently on TV. We are a full 18 years after The Office premiered in the UK, and 14 years after it premiered in the US, after all. The same types of jokes are much more common, and makes the whole thing feel a little staler than the movie did.
The show also sets up several plot threads in its first episode, but it doesn’t necessarily seem to care that much about them. The episode ambles along with lots of diversions and asides, only ever lightly touching on or developing the plot. It’s not trying to be a plot-heavy show, so to a certain extent this is fine, but it compounds the question of sustainability. A show mainly getting by on the quality of its jokes, when the types of jokes it tells are in a format that gets pretty frequent play, is a cause for some concern.
Still, there is no denying that the first episode, at least, is very well executed. The laughs are frequent and loud, the characters are fun, and the gothic costume and set design perfectly sets the mood. Nothing particularly innovative or new is being done with the TV mockumentary format, but it’s a great example of it. Sometimes that’s all you need to breathe a little (un)life into an old concept.
Rating: 8 out of 10
What We Do in the Shadows Airs Wednesday nights on FX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyZi3rJPENs
