Menace and dread aplenty lurk in Strange Empire
“My father found me strange,” young Rebecca Blithely (Melissa Farman) tells her would-be surrogate mother figure, Kat Loving (Cara Gee), midway through the first hour of the strange, female-driven period western Strange Empire. Blithely was committed to a mental institution as a child before being rescued by a kindly, benevolent couple who raised her as their own. Now, living an uncertain life in a small mountain town that straddles the Alberta-Montana border in the late 1860s, she’s decided to become a surgeon. It’s a time and place where men rule the roost — good men and bad men alike — and girls are married off at a young age before they become women.
Strange Empire hails from Durham County co-creator and writer Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, and it shares that series’ sense of menace and lurking dread, despite its period setting. When the two women, talking quietly in a forest glade, hear the sound of what sounds like gunshots in the far distance, Blithely brightens immediately and says the town must be celebrating an occasion with fireworks. Loving, who has just stared down a marauding band of varmints with her trusty .38 Long Colt revolver, knows better. A hunting party has gone missing, and it’s only a matter of time before bad men start killing good men and the women of Strange Empire are caught in the middle.
As a homegrown serialized drama, shot in Aldergrove outside of Vancouver, Strange Empire suffers from the usual compromises that weigh down so many homegrown period pieces. It’s earnest to a fault; it practically wears its political and social correctness on its 1800s sleeves. The budget seams clearly show. Strange Empire has the misfortune, too, to come along at the same time AMC’s glossy, high-end period western Hell on Wheels is in its fourth year. Hell on Wheels is sprawling, loud and charged with an almost pyrotechnic energy, where Strange Empire strives to be intimate and low-key, by necessity as much as choice.
Hell on Wheels has the advantages of a lavishly mounted, skilfully constructed U.S.-backed drama made on a U.S. budget with a homegrown supporting cast and Calgary-based crew; Strange Empire is homegrown through and through.
Strange Empire is in a tough time period, opposite high-priced imports Sleepy Hollow, The Voice, Gotham and Scorpion, and it’s the kind of story that’s best told without constant, noisy commercial interruption.
It’s possible, though, that this is one new drama that will benefit from PVR viewing after the fact.
Strange Empire is not perfect, but there are moments of real promise. It deserves a look.