Midnight, Texas Series By Charlaine Harris -
Midnight, Texas Review Hollywood Reporter. A little more than a decade ago, before HBO Go and streaming supremacy, syndication was still king and everybody made a huge deal that HBOs The Sopranos was going to re air on A E. F1 2012 Pc Game Patch on this page. Episodes were stripped of extreme violence and sexuality. The colorful language was overdubbed or muted. Hourlong episodes had to be trimmed to 4. It was a crock, but at least you still had James Gandolfini and Edie Falco. Viewers who loved A Es edited Sopranos plausibly, there are a few will probably get a real kick out of NBCs Midnight, Texas. Also based on a book series by Charlaine Harris, Midnight, Texas is True Blood only without the sex, gore and swearing. Of course its also missing the rich vein of subtext, the demented and subversive undertones and a cast of the sort of A list actors and guest stars who can be wooed by HBOs prestige, but not for an NBC summer drama. Its a very poor mans True Blood, a sentiment I convey as a critic who actually enjoyed True Blood for, at the most, one season out of its seven season run. Enough fans kept loving the tawdry soapiness and horror tropes of True Blood even when the show stunk, and Midnight, Texas will probably satisfy some of those basic cravings. Francois Arnaud stars as the hilariously named Manfred Bernardo, a psychic from a long line of gypsy fortune tellers. True Blood was the sort of show that might tell you that gypsy was a racial slur and try to reclaim the specificity of the Romani people. Honda Civic Service Manual'>04 Honda Civic Service Manual. Midnight, Texas is not. On the run from unseen debt collectors, Manfred follows his dead grandmothers advice and moves to Midnight, a small Texas town populated by outsiders and supernatural types including vampire Lemuel Peter Mensah, witch Fiji Parisa Fitz Henley, full moon fearing Rev. Xposedbridge Version 30. Emilio Yul Vazquez and several seemingly mortal familiars like hilariously named pawn shop owner Bobo Winthrop Dylan Bruce, gun toting Olivia Arielle Kebbel and Creek Sarah Ramos, the winsome lass who soon catches Manfreds eye. Midnight, it quickly turns out, is more than just a safe haven for outsiders. Its also a town on a Buffy esque Hellmouth, and Manfreds arrival is part of a prophesy suggesting nothing less than the eventual rise of Satan and all associated ramifications. Theres also a talking cat. Theres a spirit of the batshit weird that we embrace about this thing, showrunner Monica OwusuBreen tells THR. If you were looking for a new True Blood only without the sex, swearing, extreme gore and socially relevant subtext NBCs Midnight, Texas has you covered. Adapted for NBC by Monica Owusu Breen, the early episodes of Midnight, Texas are mostly soft peddling the bigger ramifications of Manfreds arrival and instead concentrating on the procedural ramifications of being in a town thats a supernatural magnet. In duller moments, Midnight is a draw for sexy succubi and Charlaine Harris approved horror mad libs like a were tiger. At its best, the lure attracts scenery chewing guest stars like Evan Jones as a bald, white supremacist biker gang leader, Zahn Mc. Clarnon as head of a vampire gang and Christopher Heyerdahl as a scary guy with dark powers and no associated gang. You welcome the eccentrics coming in from the outside because the core of Midnight, Texas is very, very bland. On pure charisma alone, Mensah is the casts standout and often elevates frequent scene partner Kebbel with him. You can forget Fiji and Bobo are part of the show at all when theyre absent, which allowed me to giggle anew every time anybody mentioned their names, which otherwise isnt ideal since theyre important to the series. Midnight, Texas executive producer Monica OwusuBreen compares the show to Charlaine Harriss novels at the NBCUniversal Press Day. RN2zS_OJbLNncGaTu1sjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9' alt='Midnight, Texas Series By Charlaine Harris -' title='Midnight, Texas Series By Charlaine Harris -' />Vazquez and Jason Lewis, nearly unrecognizable with long hair, are among several castmembers who have decided the dominant response to living in Midnight is an unvarying concerned expression. Theres a slight sweetness to the halting romance between Manfred and Creek, but Ramos role is too underwritten and Arnaud is too flat for anything more than that to read. Arnaud is like a less dynamic version of Dominic Cooper from Preacher, and Dominic Cooper is the least dynamic part of Preacher. With its Southwestern settings and occasional nods to theology, Midnight, Texas also gets to play as a sanitized and hollow take on Preacher or American Gods. NBC can definitely use my quote Its like the less edgy distant cousin of a lot of shows you love. Alan Ball used to frequently deny that he was using individual things on True Blood as metaphors for whatever was happening in the real world at the moment, but I suspected that was to enhance the shows long term universality, since there will always be outsiders and otherness can always be used to represent something. Its odd and frustrating, then, that otherness in Midnight, Texas is pretty basic and literal. These people have gifts and curses, so they hang out with each other for safety. Theres basically no subtext, even when a Native American actor and a Ghanaian British actor are depicting their characters experiences with vampirism in 1. America. You have to work hard to drain some of these potent images of all deeper meaning, but Midnight, Texas succeeds. Pilot helmer Niels Arden Oplev and subsequent directors at least keep the show moving at a fast clip, but the forward rush comes at the expense of any real scares or erotic heat. This is an NBC show, after all. Little touches of character driven darkness toward the end of the five episodes I watched maybe hinted at better things ahead for the show. I just dont see the pieces in place at the center of the cast or in the creative aspirations for Midnight, Texas to be anything more than a PG rated version of what ought to be a decadent and overblown summer guilty pleasure. Cast Franois Arnaud, Dylan Bruce, Parisa Fitz Henley, Arielle Kebbel, Jason Lewis, Sarah Ramos, Peter Mensah, Yul Vazquez. Creator Monica Owusu Breen, from the book by Charlaine Harris. Premieres Monday, 9 p.