The Strain
thrills are a long tongue coming
Some names are just asking for trouble. Take The Strain. ( See what I mean? Even without trying it becomes a gag.) Internet pundits have been rubbing their hands in glee. “It’s a strain to sit through…” “You’ll strain to see why they bothered making it…” “Ex- strain‑ious character scenes…” ( Honestly, we saw that one!). Making matters worse, it’s a show about a vampiric plague, inviting all manner of “lacks bite” and “not very infectious” gags.
The “toothless” gags are the laziest, because the vampires in The Strain use their tongues, not canine incisors, to suck blood. The show, after all, was co- created by Guillermo del Toro, who showed in Blade 2 that the most fun way to update vampires is to make their mouths even more disturbing.
Having foisted itself with such a large, slow- moving target of a title, the poor show has to struggle twice as hard to prove itself to cynical hacks. Much of the time it succeeds, with some inventive gore scenes and villains who need only stare at the camera to give you the willies. There are some great supporting performances too ( most, sadly, from characters with obvious built- in expiration dates), and the basic premise is intriguing enough to keep you interested even when the episodes do go off the boil.
Which is worryingly often. The show is regularly scuppered by dullest kind of by- the- numbers, characterbuilding fluff that would have been rejected as too hokey for Highway To Heaven.
The show began life as failed TV pitch years ago, before being reinvented as a successful series of novels co- written by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It then became a decent comic book series before coming full circle and being commissioned for a series by FX. The show, like the comic, is so far following the books very closely. A plane lands at JFK airport, but nobody disembarks. A Center For Disease Control ( CDC) team led by workaholic Ephraim Goodweather ( he’s
ignoring his son the goddamned conflicted bastard!) investigate and discover bloodsucking worms have infected the passengers and crew who then transform into crazed bloodsuckers. Meanwhile shady men in suits plot to resurrect the big bad vampire master so that suck- ageddon can commence, while Ephraim battles for joint custody of his wise- beyond- his- years son.
The pilot, despite being written and directed by del Toro and opening with a great, spooky set- up, suffers from a drearily slow opening half with too many character scenes. All the divorce and custody material is admittedly lifted straight from the books, but it seems so much less intrusive and more organic in novel form. Here it just feels like huge neon signs flashing “CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!”
David Bradley fares better as Professor Abraham Setrakian, an aged holocaust survivor with a pet blob and a way with a cane sword. The vampire elite shenanigans pique your interest too, but the show only really kicks into gear when the gore takes precedence, and very impressively over- the- top gore it is too.
But then the second episode succumbs to pointless backstoryitis again ( oh dear lord, Ephraim’s an alcoholic too) and compounds the problem with interminable characters- telling- other- charactersthings- they- already- know exposition scenes.
There’s a lot of promise here, and if you know the books then you’ll know that there’s a good chance that it will eventually deliver. But it needs to stop paying such half- hearted lip service to the accepted rules of TV drama and cut loose more often. Because that’s when it’s most fun.