Dante's Cove

DANTE'S COVE is a two disc DVD release of a TV series for Here! TV that had everyone on the waiting list to see just how far the 'new television' market would/could go. Now that the mystery is over with the public release of the DVDs, the comments and responses are bound to be mixed: there are those who whoop that gay themed and photographed stories are finally on television, and there are those who will wonder why a series could make it through the year with little to no storyline and a production that is essentially soft porn - for both men and women! The 'plot' is based on the traditional haunted house with a mysterious history dating back to 1840: the 'story' revolves around the folk who inhabit the house cum hotel in present day time and the aftershocks of lifting the door off the secrets hidden with the subsequent effects of the 'curse' on the inhabitants. Sounds like a 'been there, done that' bit? Well, it is. The difference lies in the fact that the main characters are gay and the hotel inhabitants are pretty guys and gals who spend the majority of their time topless, swimming or en flagrante.

The cast is attractive (and we see a LOT of them!) but the lack of plausible story and the mercilessly poor writing and quality of acting keep the show grounded. This is a film for a special audience and one that would benefit from watching it with sound turned off. Maybe next season will improve....

When I saw the first season, I posted a review and commented on the bad acting and sub-par writing. But, I really enjoyed the show anyway. I'm glad I stuck with it, because it's gotten better. A LOT better.

It has all the basic elements I like - Gothic plot line, romance, and skin on screen. The writing, acting, and directing have come a long way since Season 1 - in fact, I would have to say Season 3 is by far the strongest yet. The writing is tighter, the performances turned in by series veterans have improved enormously (Charlie David in particular is giving substantially-improved performances) and the show is just plain FUN! Gothic Horror is a genre I love, and Dante's Cove delivers that. Especially in Season 1 (the show moved shooting locations to Hawai'i starting Season 2) there are great locations with old architecture and some spooky native locales. The cast is hot, the sex is getting hotter by the season, and the plot lines are engaging - covering all the territory from "jealous boyfriend" to "jilted fiancée" to "mind-controlling warlock" as time rolls on in the show. There is humor (both intended and not, I think), drama, and by Season 3 the camp atmosphere feels more intended than accidental and the show has finally hit its stride.

One ding - every season the show appears to move. Between Season 1 and 2, shooting moved to Hawai'i (O'ahu, to be exact) so some established locations either just changed (The Hotel Dante) or "closed for renovations" (the Historical Society building.) Between Seasons 2 and 3 we've moved locales again! For reasons I won't get into here, we're not spending any more time at the hotel. The feel of the locales has moved from Gothic to Paradise Beach - while Hawai'i is gorgeous, it's a bit sunny and fun for the feel I got from the first season. Personally, I find the constant venue changes jarring, and hope we'll get to see some of the same locations for Season 4 when it arrives, or perhaps return for a bit to some older ones.

In any event, I love this show. For those who haven't figured this out yet, it does feature full-frontal nudity (male) and lots of sex - gay, lesbian, and IIRC a straight scene or two. The show (with the sole exception of the opening five minutes of Season 1) doesn't show full-frontal with erection, which occasionally looks strange given what's supposed to be going on, and which seems strange given where it went in the show's opening five minutes of Season 1. A couple of the actors are obviously not planning on full-frontal, and occasionally contort to avoid it, while extras are frequently (and occasionally pointlessly) nude, and soft even when horn-dogging someone. Perhaps more creative set staging or action blocking could help them cover up without looking so odd doing it, or maybe they'll decide one day that full-frontal in a gay soap is not career-ending. While I'm not looking for pornography here, a touch more realism would help with "suspension of disbelief" quite a bit.

All in all, if you like horror, and like gay themes, give "Dante's Cove" a try. Try to watch at least two seasons, and I really recommend going for the third - it's the strongest yet, and starts to deliver on the promise of the premise that we've been waiting for from the beginning.

God, how I love this programme.

They say that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters then in a thousand years they will write the works of Shakespeare.

Some years ago a group of producers put one monkey in a room with an etch-a-sketch and the result was: Dante's Cove.

It's genius. A parallel world where concepts that we accept as normal just do not exist. Like "acting". And "shirts".

But goodness me, what a wonderful place to live. An entire island populated by beautiful, young, sexy people. And Tracy Scoggins.

It's a place where someone called Reichen Lehmkuhl (who apparently won a reality TV show and dated Lance Bass) must atone for his sins by submitting to living his life under a sheen of baby oil.

It's where we marvel at the "performance" of Charlie David - possibly the most wooden actor who ever lived. (Let me put it this way - that chiselled torso isn't so much the result of Gold's Gym as it is a carpenter's workshop. No really, you can see the other actors batting away the splinters.)

In short, a masterpiece. I wouldn't miss an episode.

So on the DVD box this series reads Dark Shadows meets Melrose Place. two of my favorite shows successfully combined into one I have to to see this. add to the fact that I'm gay the guys are hot and its horror based and this is so me. Dante's Cove the series explores a witch named Grace played over the friggin top by Demonic Toys veteran Tracy Scoggins. She curses her fiancée Ambrocious who is played by the semi attractive William Gregory Lee after he is found getting done in the backdoor by the butler. She traps him in what looks like an S&M room and leaves him there for centuries. the only thing that can break his curse is a kiss from a young man. Enter the happy over sexed couple Kevin and Toby. Toby is moving back to Dantes Cove for some strange reason and wants Kevin to go with him. But Kevin is not out and Toby has trust issues with him because of past relationships. So they have a big argument. Kevin goes home gets slapped (LOL) by his stepfather and rushes to Toby in Dante's Cove. There is sex, sex, more sex, and than some more sex. it's extremely graphic and full frontal nudity is shown. There is mostly gay guy sex and Gregory Michael whom plays Kevin and Charlie David whom plays Toby have great bodies and genuinely good chemistry even if they can't act worth a damn. But there is some straight sex and lesbian sex as well. Hotties fill out the rest of the cast. And it picks up in its second half as a intriguing supernatural soap opeara. there are sordid backstories, murder, cheating, and past relationships mixed in with some witchcraft and etc. It's all pretty interesting. And it's all campy and trashy as hell. It indulges in it's ridiculousness and has a great time doing it. as you will too when viewing it. I am now declaring myself a fan of Dante's Cove. sure it's cheesy, bad and clichéd but gotta love pretty boys, over the top performances, slap scenes and dialogue that just leaps off your TV screen. Check it out!

Someone mentioned 3 parts; I just got the DVD set which is 2 parts. Fortunately the second part redeemed it, because the first part was pretty bad: it's about half softcore porn (going beyond QAF even), and the writing is pretty rough, as is some of the acting.

The second part improves just about everywhere, though some of the writing and acting still leaves a little to be desired. It actually gets gripping and leaves me wanting more, and I certainly don't mind seeing lots of bare chested hunks, especially Gregory Michael! I just wish they'd make up their mind: one minute, they're showing a sex scene out of a soft core porn video, and the next they have the actors contorted in a gruesomely unnatural position in order to avoid showing a body part that they already had on camera early on in the first episode. If they shot it naturally, even though we'd see "everything", the scene would still be far less sexual than the one that preceded it, and would flow much better.

Anyway, if it continues to improve at the rate the 2nd episode did over the first one, I'm looking forward to seeing it continue.