Talamasca: The Secret Order - Full Season 1 (AMC+)

In the last five years or so we have been living through what could easily be defined as a new golden age of the horror genre, a rebirth of the dead if you prefer the reference, given the enormous quality and variety of many of the productions that have been released on the big and small screens. However, with these trends also tend to come certain by-products derived from pretensions, from what is understood as what has to be done to be successful among today's spectators.

Talamasca: The Secret Order, with John Lee Hancock as showrunner and Nicholas Denton in the lead role, is anything but that.

If you're expecting a lot of shock value, gore, or deep psychological horror, you'll get the opposite. If you think that because it's part of Anne Rice's Immortal Universe it will be all the time making big use of vampires, witches, and spirits on screen, you'll be disappointed. If, as it's surrounded by other more fashionable styles, you think it will go at a breakneck pace, from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, as if each chapter were a cardiac movie trailer, you'll be in the wrong place. Dizzying twists and super-twisty plots? Nope.

Instead, in AMC+'s new premiere you'll find a series that's pretty classic in every respect, one that's slow-cooked and, as Lee Hancock himself promised us in our recent interview, much more grounded in reality than you'd think at first.

Denton's Guy Anatole is a solid protagonist who manages to sell you on his emotions and has a couple of great moments. He may look overacted, overdone in the forced gestures he's asked to perform when he tries to read other characters' minds (light spoiler alert: that's his power), but otherwise he knows how to carry the weight of his confusion and concerns. Should he take his first big job as a top law firm lawyer or be seduced by the occult? Can he trust Talamasca, the vampires, or any person or supernatural creature he comes across?

Denton's role is given weight in this first season, above all, by Elizabeth McGovern as Helen, his mysterious contact in the order. Also, the role of Celine Buckens as Doris, who begins with an appealing seriousness like Carrie-Anne Moss's Trinity and ends with a remarkable presence. However, all are literally eclipsed as William Fichtner's Jasper gains weight. If Talamasca had to concede any cliché of the modern series, let it be that of the bad guy who is immediately likable, and I have a feeling that this character will end up becoming a sort of antagonist-coprotagonist in the second batch of episodes.

So, more like a light spy series than a supernatural epic, Talamasca's hour or so episodes pass by quietly. At times it reminded me of The Mentalist, even in its more ridiculous or sloppy resources and dubious photography choices. Or the many series of the 2000s that I would watch today on my phone, commuting, rather than at home in 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos. That's what it lends itself to, and it's perfectly valid. It didn't get to bore me, but it didn't completely thrill me either. It didn't get my heart pumping... until the season finale.

As it burns slowly, the creators have waited until the end, until the sixth and final episode, to transcend a bit the character arcs introduced and to lay on the table not only all the cards that were being held close to their chests in the previous five, but also the connections and repercussions that make up the overarching narrative: the war or coexistence between mortals and immortals, the true role of The Order, and the fascinating talents of the gifted.

Thus, with a closure as delicious as some of the necks the vampires savour on screen, Talamasca: The Secret Order has become an easily consumed but well-made series that has enticed me enough at its first conclusion to make me want to follow it in the future. Five or so hours of entertainment that cleverly stands out from the mediocre crowd, without trying to compete with the new horror elites.