Long, thin clouds trace their spectral fingers across a full moon. A lonesome cry drifts across the moor. The dewey grass sticks cold to your feet. A spectral chill runs down your spine. And out of the darkness comes the haunting echoes of two distinctly English laughs. You try to run but it's too late. Up from the mire and the muck two familiar ghosts arise, Cornetto ice cream cones clutched in their hands. They're back.
Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz. The World’s End. Together with writer/director Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost crafted The Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy, a fan favorite series of comedies parodying popular film genres. Now, 7 years after “The World’s End” left theaters, the comic duo has re-teamed for “Truth Seekers,” an Amazon Prime Original Series.
In the eight-episode first season, we are introduced to Gus Roberts (Frost), broadband installer by day and amateur paranormal investigator by night. After being assigned a new partner, Elton (Samson Kayo), to train at work, Gus finds himself drawn into a web of heightened supernatural phenomenon the likes of which he’s never seen, and begins to suspect a deeper, darker conspiracy is at work.
For fans of the Cornetto Trilogy excited for this reunion, the good news is it very much holds true to the tone and style of those films, even without Wright’s involvement.
"You just have to not make fun of the horror, the key with horror comedy is to take the horror completely seriously and allow the comedy to exist adjacent to it,” Pegg said in an interview with The Luxe Review. This is the philosophy that made movies like “Shaun of the Dead” work so well, and it continues to shine here, with “Truth Seekers” proving effective both as a comedy and as a horror series.
The bad news, however, comes for those excited for more Pegg/Frost antics. Playing Dan, Gus’ boss at work, Pegg takes on a background role, only getting perhaps a total of ten minutes shared time with his old partner in gags throughout the run of the series. Instead, Gus spends most of the time with Elton, Astrid (Emma D’Arcy as a mysterious woman looking for help), his father-in-law Richard (a hilariously against-type Malcom McDowell) and Elton’s agoraphobic sister Helen (Susie Wokoma).
The main cast certainly rises to the occasion. The characters are likable, memorable and interact well with each other. It is interesting to see Frost take the lead on the project, having spent most of his career bouncing off of Pegg's leading man. Now he's the one driving the plot and Kayo has inserted himself seamlessly into the equation as the role Frost would have held 10 years ago.
Elsewhere, Wokoma cements her status as a rising star to be reckoned with, deftly handling the comic and dramatic sides to Helen, while the famously stoic McDowell is a delight as the haplessly aging Richard. If there is a weak link in the main cast, it would be D'Arcy, whose fairly generic character gives her little to work with.
The plot itself shifts from a basic "case-of-the-week" setup into a serialized storyline very quickly, a transition that could have benefited from a longer season order. The mystery is standard genre fare, but well-executed, and leaves none of our unlikely heroes the same as when they began.
Our central trio of protagonists – Gus, Elton and Astrid – are all dealing with the mysterious ghosts of their past traumas in life. And so it seems only fitting that the greatest detractor to “Truth Seekers” is the ghost of its own stars’ past – constantly being compared to the beloved comedies that made Frost and Pegg famous.
Fans of the Cornetto Trilogy should definitely check the new series out, as should any lover of horror comedies. But for maximum enjoyment, exorcise your expectations at the door. “Truth Seekers” is wholly a work all its own – a funny, scary, heart-warming new series with a story well worth hearing.
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