The Prestige TV Podcast - 'What We Do in the Shadows'

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

'What We Do in the Shadows,' a mockumentary about vampires, is one of the rare TV shows that is better than the movie that it is based on. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to TV concierge, Daily Podcast, with Ringer Staffers, help you navigate the crowded TV landscape. I'm Chris Ryan, and today I'm joined by my pal, Sean Fennessee, and we're here to talk about FX's wonderful sitcom, what we do in the shadow. Sean, give me the quick pitch on why people should be watching this show. Who doesn't love a good mockumentary?

You know, the mockumentary format has been worked over time and again. You've seen Spinal Tap. You've seen the great films of Christopher Guest. You've seen The Office. but have you ever seen a horror movie as a mockumentary? You might have seen it once before when it was a film, which was adapted into a TV series for FX last year. Now we're in the second season of this show,

and I think it's authentically the funniest show on television right now. I agree with you. I think it's a great testament to the never-ending, like, fountain of youth that comes with the sitcom. If you have writers who are clever enough and filmmakers who are clever enough and an ensemble that's clever enough, you can find stuff to do with a concept that just pushes and it pushes it and pushes it.

I mean, if I told you what we do in the shadows is about, which is essentially a mockumentary about a group of vampires living in Staten Island, you'd be like, oh, that sounds pretty funny. They made a movie about that. I don't know if I need to watch a show about it. And it turns out it's the most rewarding week-to-week watch you might have right now. Every week is this delightful exploration of a situation, and they're just doing it on a week-to-week basis out of such a high-react.

high level. I feel like it just lives and dies on the strength, literally it lives and dies on the strength of its cast, which is not quite the same cast from the Taika Waititi and Jamein Clement film that came out in 14, but it has basically two huge discoveries for me. One is Kvon Novak, who plays Nandor, who is ostensibly the star of the show, though it really is an ensemble piece. And more so than him is Natasia Demetro, who I think is just a stone cold comic genius. She is a British comedic actress who plays Nasia in the movie, a Romani vampire, and she is married to Matt Berry's character, Laslo. Yeah. And they have a kind of Archie and Edith Bunkers meets, you know, Billy Baldwin and Sharon Stone and Sliver thing going on. They have like a lot of sexual heat and

also a little bit of animosity. There's also this sort of domestic drama that's going on between them as they're living with their friends and vampires in arms. And Demetro is like so funny and clever and seems to be doing kind of riffs on, you know, feminism and also doing riffs on the struggles of the modern woman while also representing a person who was first born 500 years ago. Like it's just a, it's a very arch show and it's a very self-aware show. but also it really like I said kind of rises and falls based on the strength of the performances

and this cast is so so good. Yeah, I mean, and it's got like a really deep bench. Not unlike something like, maybe not as deep as something like The Office, but it reminds me of any great sitcom where the fourth or fifth character can carry an episode. And they recently aired one about Colin Robinson, who is maybe my favorite character on the show played by Mark Prosh. And it's about Colin who is in. energy vampire who drains people of their energy, getting a promotion at work. And the opening moments of this episode where he is repetitively, lightly coughing in the office. And everybody's like, Colin, would you like a lozenge or something? It is so funny. But yeah, like the depth of the show and their ability to start out with kind of a toss-off joke, like, what if Nandor had to

check his email? And take it to the 10th or 11th or 13th, punch. line of that setup is what makes it so rewarding. Yeah, I think there's also just something beautiful about the economy of the show. It is your classic 22 and a half minute sitcom experience. And so many of the shows that we talk about now are these intense dramas that have been elongated to 69 minutes an episode. It's very manageable. You know, it's an elixir after a heavy drama or a competition series that you're

watching right now. It's also, in addition to its deep bench of character actors, it has like maybe the greatest collection of guest stars of any show in recent memory. I mean, here's a brief rundown of people who have recently appeared on this show. Benedict Wong, Haley Joel Osmond, Craig Robinson, Paul Rubens, Wesley Snipes, Danny Trejo, Evan Rachel Wood, Tilda Swinton, the aforementioned Tycho ITD, Dave Bautista, Nick Kroll, Kristen Schall. I mean, it's kind of an amazing collection of people who come to play for like one episode. Amazing. It reminds me a little bit of documentary now.

in that it's got a unique power to draw people in because you can tell that people just really dig this show and when people that funny dig a show, you know that they're on to something. Do you mind at all or do you long at all for any kind of overarching serialized narrative for this show? They kind of got into it towards the end of the first season about the vampire's relationship

to like the kind of greater vampire universe. But do you care at all about like the story behind this or do you just want to see funny situations? Well, there is like this undercurrent on the story. series, the character that Harvey Gianne plays, Guillermo, who is Nandor's familiar, which is his human counterpart, the person who is sort of, is basically his personal assistant, is secretly descended from a long line of Van Helsings, the famed Dracula killers, the vampire killers. And so, you know, Guillermo has this sort of crisis of conscience every few episodes where he realizes

that his fate is to ultimately kill vampires, but what he secretly wants is for Nandor to make him a vampire, which is why he's operating as his familiar. So there is like, there's a story. You know, there's a long-term tale that they're telling, which is the survival and thriving of this small collection of vampires in Staten Island. But it doesn't really matter. Like, you don't have to care about that. If you just picked up the show this Wednesday, then you'll enjoy it. You don't need to know about the archaeology or the mythology of this story. It's just funny people being absurd. Yeah, they do an incredible job of, you could jump in literally from A, episode of the show and kind of have a pretty good sense of what was going on. That's where the

mockumentary kind of comes into play because it always does the exposition and set up for you in every episode in like eight seconds. And you will already know because they're addressing the camera, because they make reference to their historical atrocities that they've committed. I really enjoyed Matt Barry's character claiming to have invented bunny ears and pictures by looking at a portrait of himself the other day. So yeah, it's about midway through. second season, and it's one of those shows where I would gladly take five, six seasons of this show if they wanted to do it that way. So often, I feel like when we get obscure movies that get reinterpreted into films, they lose the essence of what makes the original property so powerful.

This is a rare case. This is the new version of saying that the book is better than the movie, but like in this case, I find that the TV show is actually better than the movie. And even though it's using the created world that comes from the movie, that comes from the movie, movie. It's just the sort of recyclable format and setting and series of characters that I could see myself watching five, six, seven seasons of this show because of the way that it's structured. So I highly recommend it. It's one of my absolute favorite shows on TV right now. Yeah, and you never know you might get another type of ICT directorial entry here. As he did one in the first season. I'm not sure if he's doing one in the second season, but the one he did in the first season, which I think was the

penultimate episode of that season, was one of my favorite episodes of TV from that year. all right Sean thank you so much for joining me today on TV concierge we'll be back with more TV recommendations soon