Tuesday 8 March 2016

Urban Gothic, Season 2 (2001)



I felt that the execution of season one of Urban Gothic fell far short of its ambition.  Is season two any different?  Yes, yes it is.

Alas, the difference is that they appear to have abandoned any ambition.

Season two continues the theme of having scripts that feel under-cooked, but - if I may stretch the metaphor - it's like they've stopped even bothering to check if their ingredients are fresh.  For instance, one of the episodes in this season is flat out just "a bunch of people are trapped in a house besieged by zombies".  Yeah, thanks guys.  I think I may have seen that already, and you're no George Romero.  Or there's the episode about a TV game show where the contestants can win a car ... by standing there the longest.  Because that sounds like a TV someone would actually make.  I mean, this is a horror show so of course something starts killing them off, but that's no excuse for not coming up with something better.  And it's not like the horror elements are any better: What's killing the contestants? And why? Eh, motives and explanations would just get in the way!  And mystery is spooky, amirite?

No show, you are not right.

There are a couple of tolerable 22 minuters here, though ironically one of them isn't even a horror story.  I mean ... it is about necrophilia, which is certainly gross, but there's nothing actually scary in it.  Not that much of the season is scary, really, beyond hackneyed "people in a dark building, something might jump out at them" kind of way.

It's not hard to see why this was the show's last series.

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