Watched all eight episodes of the U.K.'s Lockwood & Co. (2023), about young ghost hunters in an indeterminate time period (there are no cell phones and no Internet) set in London. The country is beset with The Problem, an epidemic of ghosts whose touch bring death, and only psychic young people and children have the ability to fight them. Several agencies, supervised by adults, are tasked to conduct training on talented, young students, who must pass Fourth Grade in order to be considered professionals. These agencies are overseen and monitored by the DEPRAC (Department of Psychical Research and Control). The protagonists in the series are Lucy Carlyle, Anthony Lockwood, and George Casper Karim, who work as an independent and unlicensed team.
The series is in English but features English subtitles, which is just as well not only because the cast tends to mumble their dialogue but also because the script employs untypical terms taken from the novels authored by Jonathan Stroud, such as sensitives instead of psychics, listeners instead of audients, Type One, Type Two, and Type Three Ghosts; visitors, changers, wraith hunters, relic men, cold maidens, agents, death glows, and ghost-locking, to name several. The last series that attempted this, as far as I know, was Grimm and its Wesens, woging, hexenbiests, and zauberbiests
The problem with the concept and script of the series is that they work too much off the Harry Potter template. If you look closely enough, Anthony Lockwood is Harry Potter, Lucy Carlyle is Hermione Granger, George Karim is Ron Weasley, Quill Kipps is Draco Malfoy, and DEPRAC is the Ministry of Magic. The depiction of young psychics seeking to escape from an abusive family has become old hat by now--so is the predictable insertion of a ball sequence to show the protagonists in glamorous attire. The cheap exposition technique of culprits confessing their motives and movements to protagonists, really to the audience, is employed more than once. And the use of iron, silver, and sand, filings, chains, rapiers, silver nets, and incendiaries also seem both unlikely and inconvenient.
Yes, despite all of the special effects and AI, we are all still waiting for writers to step out of the 20th century and enter the 21st, and it is already 2023.
Strangely, the saving grace of this series is the laid-back, self-effacing, but intense performance of Cameron Chapman as Anthony Lockwood. He makes no effort to shine, but he dazzles. There is the danger, though, of his getting stuck with the same predicament that Tyler Posey was in with Teen Wolf, He should be given non-supernatural roles from time to time.
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