I'm curious now which parts you liked BETTER than you expected, since this review is mostly about which parts you disliked Gods, yeah, it did end up a bit dire, didn't it haha. I think probably because the things that exceeded expectations were a bit more vague - the sense of place, the sense of better stories right there and yet underexplored, so it's hard to try to articulate them without pointing out where the show as-is failed.
I think one of them is Tilly - I actually went back and forth on her a lot, and I think I definitely liked her more than you, and with a little more distance from the show I think I might've come down on her a bit hard here. There's something really interesting about picking the person who's most self-centred to act as the vessel for a creature who's been summoned to serve, and if there'd been a series 2 it might've been the catalyst for a complicated sort of growth. She's imperfectly expanded her circle of care to include her brother (and possibly Trudy? and definitely hurt a lot of people along that way) and possessed by something that is more interested in murder than anything else despite the cult's hopes - idk, I like thinking about it! No guarantee it would've gone well in a series 2 of course, but maybe that's the part of her that wasn't clicking, the part where she gets up to the moment of change and then just stops, it's deeply unsatisfying.
(Also, on a shallow note, all the potential terrible manipulative mentorship for Sylvia/Tilly. They're very pretty and very terrible and I love it.)
I also wasn't expecting such a - genuine friendship among the cult members? Up until the end when the angel's crossed over and Sylvia starts thinking about who's committed enough, they're very invested in caring for each other. Of course, looking too hard at that also raises questions about why they felt the need to summon angels to Fix Things, which brings me back to why the fuck are there angels, Kris, which...
Graves was also a brilliant surprise - she's a lot more competent than a lot of the 'village copper who gets the supernatural thrown at her' types, but it's not paired with the sort of ambition/desire to Get Away that that kind of competence sometimes demands, and she was a lot of fun to watch.
It's a weird little show! Part of me wonders if six was a bad number of episodes - cut the supernatural and give it four, or commit to something supernatural and give it eight, and either way I think it comes out stronger. Most of my low-brain low-commitment horror doesn't leave me with such a 'oh man WHAT IF' feeling haha.
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Gods, yeah, it did end up a bit dire, didn't it haha. I think probably because the things that exceeded expectations were a bit more vague - the sense of place, the sense of better stories right there and yet underexplored, so it's hard to try to articulate them without pointing out where the show as-is failed.
I think one of them is Tilly - I actually went back and forth on her a lot, and I think I definitely liked her more than you, and with a little more distance from the show I think I might've come down on her a bit hard here. There's something really interesting about picking the person who's most self-centred to act as the vessel for a creature who's been summoned to serve, and if there'd been a series 2 it might've been the catalyst for a complicated sort of growth. She's imperfectly expanded her circle of care to include her brother (and possibly Trudy? and definitely hurt a lot of people along that way) and possessed by something that is more interested in murder than anything else despite the cult's hopes - idk, I like thinking about it! No guarantee it would've gone well in a series 2 of course, but maybe that's the part of her that wasn't clicking, the part where she gets up to the moment of change and then just stops, it's deeply unsatisfying.
(Also, on a shallow note, all the potential terrible manipulative mentorship for Sylvia/Tilly. They're very pretty and very terrible and I love it.)
I also wasn't expecting such a - genuine friendship among the cult members? Up until the end when the angel's crossed over and Sylvia starts thinking about who's committed enough, they're very invested in caring for each other. Of course, looking too hard at that also raises questions about why they felt the need to summon angels to Fix Things, which brings me back to why the fuck are there angels, Kris, which...
Graves was also a brilliant surprise - she's a lot more competent than a lot of the 'village copper who gets the supernatural thrown at her' types, but it's not paired with the sort of ambition/desire to Get Away that that kind of competence sometimes demands, and she was a lot of fun to watch.
It's a weird little show! Part of me wonders if six was a bad number of episodes - cut the supernatural and give it four, or commit to something supernatural and give it eight, and either way I think it comes out stronger. Most of my low-brain low-commitment horror doesn't leave me with such a 'oh man WHAT IF' feeling haha.