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1x04 - ‘Welcome to My World’

Back to Chris Davis at the helm as Hellbound continues its first run, after three opening episodes of consistent mid-range quality. ‘Welcome to My World’ doesn’t really buck that trend, despite Davis endeavouring the widen the net slightly.

Crucially, he once again rolls back the description and tries wrestling a little more with character, though not before quite a neat bit of visual direction at the very top end of the piece which, despite needing a bit of a proof, came across really rather well. Beyond that however, the focus shifts to James and new arrival Adam, giving us... not much more than a cryptic conversation really. In fairness, Davis is establishing a little backstory and dropping a few pointers as to where things are going, but a big problem is that James & Adam read very very similar on the page; Adam has the potential to be a little more whip smart, sarcastic, but Davis doesn’t draw this out enough & their conversation is a little flat as a result (it doesn’t help that James still still STILL is coming across just like Angel. Apart from that, Davis has perhaps more success with the Alyson side of things - much as the previous cliffhanger is swiftly undone a little, she staking the vamp was a nice move & Davis playing with linear storytelling works well.

All in all... motoring along, Hellbound, still. Decent writing, a decent enough story, but nothing outstanding, nothing original, nothing hugely exciting.

1x03 - A PIcture Paints a Thousand Words

You know, I have to be honest, the first thing that ran through my head reading this title was the late, great Telly Savalas: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J94-_w9ARX0

But anyway! We’re back with Jack Malone here and as a result the more lyrical description returns, though not quite as successfully as in the first episode - there’s quite a lot of blocky direction here, perhaps not quite enough dialogue to break up the movement, too little ‘white space’ as they say, which always makes a piece of writing a tougher read. Also there was a touch again of quite clunky phrasing that doesn’t always make sense, sentencing a little off, and indeed some mixing of tenses in places. From a plot perspective, I felt we had too little in the way of James/Alyson interaction here - after two episodes putting them together, I didn’t expect Malone to prise them apart so soon. It wasn’t too great a stretch to guess James’ lost love was Melanie either, another twist we’ve seen done before - adding to the normality of Hellbound right now, not stretching itself creatively.

However... and this is a good however... once again Malone’s strength for description shines through, painting a picture indeed very well of his locations used here. And I have to say, the cliffhanger with Alyson being bitten I did NOT see coming for a moment, so good show there! As ever, still waiting for Hellbound to develop into something truly original, but I still have faith.

Time to start on Hellbound:

1x01 - ‘Whispers in the Dark’

A new writer for me to chow down on in Jack D. Malone as I enter the webisode world of Hellbound. I confess I came into this with zero advance knowledge of what I was reading, and I was actually quite impressed with several factors. I didn’t, for one, expect this to be nearly as evocatively, and in some places elegantly, penned as Malone delivers - he writes in a very visual way that brings his images alive often in your mind’s eye, that struck me right away and made me sit up and take greater note. The downside, as a result, is what prevents this opener rising above middle ground.

See, quite often, this reads like prose. Big, chunky descriptive passsages that - however nicely turned out - fail frequently to keep the plot moving and that’s where Malone lets himself down right now; a great script does both, retains forward momentum while creating a vivid picture, and Malone only has the second one down here. From a character perspective, well... I couldn’t help but feel James was Angel & Alison was Kate Lockley, if I’m completely honest; the shadowy, handsome vampire skirting good/evil & the earnest, hard-done-by blonde cop with an asshole of a boss. Sound familiar? Alison is nicely depicted, and the mystery of her mother intrigues, but the Chief is mired in cliche and Malone’s use of flashbacks jar - at this early stage, in such a short script, he shouldn’t be relying on them. So from a character & dialogue perspective, it misses more than it hits.

But... bags and bags of potential for this to get better, ‘Whispers in the Dark’ introducing it’s world in a dark and Gothic manner, with Malone marking himself out as a writer with growing skill in how to paint a picture. I hope he gets the balance a little better with the other factors going forward.

Bad news guys, but VPN will bounce back I'm sure. MZP has had such dark days and we're close to 10 years standing - you'll survive.

Kerry made my point there with much more eloquence, thank you.

Matthew I can see you've changed a few characters & stuff, but fundamentally this is the same set up, character, location & ensemble as Buffy. And that means, try as you might, Buffy is what you'll end up writing and, well... you won't do it as well as Joss Whedon None of us would.

Like Kerry said, try a radically different kind of approach to the Slayer. Why not have her in a mental institution fighting nasties & struggling to overcome psychological issues? Or make it a bit Fray, lob it into the future & create an entirely different world around Lily with androids & synthetics & stuff - Buffy meets Blade Runner (hell I'd LOVE that! )

Trust me, if you make this more original, you will have SO much more fun writing it dude.

Pleasure mate. I'm sure you'll sort any SPAG out for the next run of eps - once people point these things out, you become more watchful. I have faith.

And much as it's still developing, I do enjoy the show. Huge potential here with the characters & world, so keep trucking along and don't give it up.