GRAVE SIGHT
A young medium reluctantly helps her cop pop solve crimes in new supernatural procedural The InBetween
Think about how many genre shows there have been about people who have the power to “see” visions of the past, future, or the spectral plane. Yeah, it’s a lot. From Firefly to The Ghost Whisperer, there’s a plethora of series set around mediums trying to help others via their gift.
But how many shows revolve around the ones who aren’t so hot about helping?
New supernatural mystery, The InBetween, follows the path least taken with Cassie Bedford, a young woman who has chilling visions of dark things that happened, or will happen. She even interacts with dead folk that only she can see. None of it is fun or heartwarming for Cassie, which creates the space for some interesting storytelling.
For series creator/showrunner Moira Kirland, it’s an idea 15 years in the making. A veteran writer of similarly themed shows like The Dead Zone and Medium, even while working on those series, Kirland was interested in exploring the darker side of this particular breed of “gift”.
“I remember thinking, you see all of these psychics and psychic mediums, and they always seem to be so put together and calm about things,” Kirland tells Red Alert. “And I thought, ‘Boy, I feel like this sort of thing would really play havoc on your life. It would make your life difficult.’ So I had this idea of a girl who’s locked herself away.”
With the television landscape increasingly leaning towards horror, and antihero female leads, Kirland has finally found the right time for her exploration. “The InBetween is the new version of those shows,” Kirland says. “It’s a little darker and a little weirder.”
Tortured her whole life by her ability, Cassie lives alone in a dated house and isn’t exactly warm and friendly to anyone. She reluctantly assists her cop father, Tom Hackett (played by Paul Blackthorne) when she sees scenarios that help fill in the blanks for his more challenging cases. Kirland says what Cassie relays to him are more like puzzles, instead of literal visions, or clues. “I wanted to make it weird and something that needs to be interpreted. Tom even says several times, ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to sit with it.’”
“Being a cop is a calling for Tom,” Kirland continues. “It’s bigger for him than a job, and he sees that in her. She doesn’t have any of his training, but what Tom is trying to do is to get her to see this as a calling too. So, the first season is really about Cassie accepting her gift. She’s finally admitting it’s not going anywhere, and if I’m going to have this, I’m going to use it. As the season progresses and she helps him more and more, she starts to get a handle on things, but there are some challenges that she has to deal with.” In particular, Kirland promises a lot of complicated cases, and even a recurring entity named Ed Roven (Sean Bolger) whose existence becomes intertwined with Cassie’s in a way audiences won’t see coming. TB
The InBetween comes to Universal TV in June.