Billed as “Gothic horror meets spy thriller”, this latest installment of AMC’s “Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe“, following two seasons of Interview with the Vampire and two of The Mayfair Witches, is the first of these shows not to be based on any particular book or series by Anne Rice (or anyone else for that matter), the opening credits instead reading “Based on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches“. The Talamasca, part-Illuminati, part-MI5 spookshow, are a recurring element in both series, in both book and television form, but were never given the spotlight before now.
As usual in any story about a secret organisation, we are introduced to the Talamasca and how the operate through the eyes of an Everyman-type character, here played by Nicholas Denton. Denton’s character is young, hard-working, down-on-his-luck, male, white, and the show is so shameless about his status as a cypher protagonist that his name is literally “Guy”. Guy, a promising young lawyer who also happens to hear the thoughts of others, instead finds himself recruited by the enigmatic Helen (Elizabeth McGovern, channeling Judi Dench’s M or, if you prefer, Jessica Walter’s Mallory Archer), with a little help from a superbly flamboyant Jason Schwartzman cameo, and sent to London where he soon gets tangled up with a smarmy yet charming Texas vampire played by the veteran William Fichtner (Heat, Black Hawk Down, The Dark Knight) and a local chapter of water-gypsy witches who live on and around a river barge. There are many enjoyable turns in all of this, but the highlight is Bryony Hannah as Ridge, a Met detective who ends up on the trail of the witches, the vampires, and the Talamasca all at once and never loses her professional cool.
A change of pace from the overheated Interview with the Vampire and the relentlessly convoluted Mayfair Witches, Talamasca‘s spy-fiction narrative is surprisingly, and refreshingly, straightforward. There are, of course, secrets revealed and betrayals committed but for the most part we’re following one, sympathetic, unusually uncomplicated character as he attempts to carry out his employer’s orders. There is some slack around the middle part of the season, which is pretty much to be expected with any modern serialised television and, at this point, could be considered a standard part of the formula. Talamasca is only 6 episodes where the shows around it have been 7, and the faster pace suits it. Not needing to hit plot beats from any particular Anne Rice book likely helps, too, for she has never been a writer praised for the straightforwardness of her narratives.
With that said, though, the season does end with more open questions than it begins with; no surprise for a show like this whose main purpose is to expand a pre-existing fictional universe, but the question must be asked, is the Anne Rice Immortals TV Universe going anywhere? Interview with the Vampire is rich, dark and sweet like chocolate cake and is about to transition into Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, having got through its namesake first book in the series successfully. This is to be looked forward to, but with Mayfair Witches running its narrative further into the ground and Talamasca representing nothing more than wheel-spinning (albeit well-made and entertaining wheel-spinning), where do things end with all this narrative expansion stuff? Here’s hoping Immortals doesn’t become the literal zombie franchise that The Walking Dead now represents.