What We Do In The Shadows: These flatshare vampires are enjoyably daft but their jokes need more bite – Evening Standard

By this stage in the global pandemic, with anger boiling over and no end in sight, you would be forgiven for craving a bit of mindless humour.

Even better, some jokes that draw on the petty frustrations that might have been building up about whoever you have been cooped up with, and how much washing up they have been doing.

So the second series of What We Do in the Shadows has come at just the right time. It may be about vampires but abandon all Buffy or Twilight comparisons: its more like Spaced or a Seinfeld a silly, surreal flatshare comedy. But because its about vampires the costumes are better.

Based on Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clements 2014 film, it is a mockumentary about four vampires who came to New York to conquer North America. Two hundred years later, they havent made it past Staten Island and theyre getting on each others nerves. It has one of the best theme tunes on TV the incongruously jaunty Youre Dead by Sixties singer Norma Tanega, accompanied by photographs of the vampires pulling funny faces through the ages.

(BBC/FX Productions)

We find them exhausted husband and wife Lazlo and Nadja (Matt Berry and Natasia Demetriou) are having trouble hanging on to a familiar. Theyve been through seven in the last few months. Finally theyve found a keeper, Topher (Haley Joel Osment, the child from The Sixth Sense all grown up and referring to people as dawg), but is he too good to be true?

Aimee Lou Wood as Aimee Gibbs and Emma Mackey as Maeve Wiley

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Aimee Lou Wood as Aimee Gibbs and Emma Mackey as Maeve Wiley

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They're back: Doctor Who will return on Wednesday 1 January

BBC / BBC Studios

The Masked Singer

ITV

Love Island

ITV

RuPaul's Drag Race UK

BBC /Leigh Keily

After Life

Netflix

The Circle

Studio Lambert

White House Farm

ITV

Deadwater Fell

Mark Mainz

Star Trek: Picard

CBS

Belgravia

Carnival Films

Guillermo, who is the other house familiar, working for Nandor (Kayvan Novak), is suspicious that Topher isnt taking this job seriously enough. To compound their stress theres a vampire assassin on the loose. The writing isnt as sharp as it was in the film, but the first series took a while to get into its stride too and the performances are endearing enough that its still entertaining.

Nandor was a fighter in the Ottoman Empire but cant make his housemates tidy the fridge. Berry plays a version of his Toast of London character, making rude gags at any opportunity, and Demetriou brings the spirit of her brothers show Stath Lets Flats which she is in too using malapropisms to comic effect.

As well as her winning turn of phrase, she is particularly adept at withering expressions, while Berrys skill is saying things like knob lord in booming aristocratic tones.

As long as you dont take this show, or indeed yourself, too seriously, its an enjoyably daft escape. Its good to have the vamps back. Im just hoping their humour gets a bit more full-blooded as the series continues.

What We Do In The Shadows airs on BBC2, tonight at 10pm and 10.25pm

See original here:
What We Do In The Shadows: These flatshare vampires are enjoyably daft but their jokes need more bite - Evening Standard

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero