Talamasca - The Secret Order: Witches, Vampires, and Mysteries on Netflix
The third series in AMC's Immortal Universe, adapting Ann Rice's novels and world, struggles to find its identity between spy-thriller and supernatural drama.
Guy Anatole, a promising lawyer, is preparing to start a career in a prestigious New York law firm. The young man possesses a special gift: the telepathic ability to perceive the thoughts of others, albeit fragmentarily and not always controllable at will. On the very morning of his hiring, he is approached by Helen, an elegant middle-aged woman who turns out to be a member of the Talamasca, an ancient secret organization dedicated to monitoring the supernatural world.
She convinces Guy to join the group's ranks, promising him answers about his past, particularly about his mother, whom he always believed dead but who might still be alive, also connected to this ancient cult. The protagonist of Talamasca - The Secret Order is sent on an undercover mission to London to expose a corrupt agent who is allegedly collaborating with dark forces to destroy the Talamasca from within. The investigation leads him to encounter Jasper, a charismatic vampire who seems to possess crucial information about the organization and the mysterious 752, an artifact of unknown form that could disrupt the balance between the mortal world and the undead. Guy thus finds himself trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, where he cannot trust anything or anyone.
Talamasca: A Matter of Choices
Having recently landed on Netflix, Talamasca - The Secret Order represents the third piece of the ambitious Immortal Universe that AMC is building around the works of Anne Rice, after Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches. It's a peculiar operation, as the series focuses on an organization that, in Rice's novels, primarily served as a narrative glue between various supernatural worlds, without ever receiving its own dedicated saga. But let's proceed in order and discover whether this experiment of expanding a secondary element of the American writer's mythology into a paranormal thriller has succeeded or not.
The fundamental problem lies in its underlying uncertainty. Creator John Lee Hancock and co-showrunner Mark Lafferty attempted to merge spy-thriller, paranormal drama, and investigative procedural, with a dash of National Treasure-style adventure: the result is a curious hybrid, but one that doesn't quite understand where it wants to go or, more importantly, how.
The screenplay proceeds through riddles, half-truths, and inevitable red herrings, with characters constantly speaking in enigmas, concealing what is then available for subsequent plot twists, without ever getting to the point, as also demonstrated by the open ending of this first season, which nevertheless throws interesting ideas into the narrative grinder.
An Uneven Cast
Why is Guy so crucial to the fate of the Talamasca? What truly lies within the ranks of this highly secret organization that has existed for millennia? Too many questions remain unanswered, to the point that the most successful and fascinating character ends up being the villain played by William Fichtner, ambiguous enough for that tone of grays and chiaroscuros that the six episodes at times seem to imply, only to re-establish the hierarchies between good and evil in the frantic finale.
The "chosen one" played by Nicholas Denton, a young Australian actor, is a charisma-less figure, the classic good guy who finds himself thrust into something bigger than him. And at the same time, those closest to him are underdeveloped, with a few flashbacks here and there introducing us to their respective backgrounds: Elizabeth McGovern, a talented actress previously seen in Downton Abbey, is utterly wasted, and Celine Buckens's Doris is poorly characterized.
Yet there's plenty of material to work with, with many ideas that make the viewer want to know more, a desire unfortunately almost unexpressed, at least at the beginning of this franchise, which is too timid both in terms of pacing – some episodes get lost in explanations that circle around without leading anywhere – and in the number of actual revelations and plot twists. Will the premises given by the last episode be enough to entice the audience for the second season, which has not yet been announced by AMC?