Bedlam

First of all, I think it's good to know going in that season 1 and season 2 are different beasts. The first season follows Jed, a man who sees ghosts and returns to his family's asylum-turned-apartment building after being summoned by an unknown entity. While there he tries to understand his deeper connection to the place. Season 2 follows Ellie, a paramedic who has started seeing ghosts and goes to the asylum/apartments to seek out Jed (her access to medical files means she knows that he also saw ghosts).

The premise itself is good, and I was interested in both the "episode of the week" parts (ie always figuring out which former mental patient was haunting someone and why), and the long-form story (about Jed and Ellie and their connection to the asylum). But both aspects of the series let me down quite a bit. There are some creepy images here and there, but the resolutions are often not very satisfying. We are repeatedly shown mental patients who haunt the asylum because they were horribly abused, and usually their stories end with really superficial solutions, like returning a possession to a grave.

As other reviews have mentioned, there are several mysteries that are simply never solved or just dropped from the narrative and it's quite frustrating. Characters we care about--MAIN CHARACTERS--leave or die off-screen, as if the actors just simply didn't come back to work and another character explains what happened to them or where they are.

I don't mind shows that aren't awesome, but this one doesn't even have an episode that I could name as a stand-out or even totally good episode. On the whole they tend to range from boring to middling. On the plus side, there are only 12 episodes in the entire show, and I liked Theo James and Lacey Turner enough as the leads that I stayed relatively engaged. Hugo Speer (as the probably evil uncle Warren) is good, but given almost nothing to do except pop up now and then to be menacing.

I can't really recommend this one, nor can I say it should be avoided. It's just . . . eh. If you like ghosty/paranormal stuff, this is good enough for a Friday night binge watch.

I think the show is really worth watching. It's short, condensed, well balanced between the self-conclusive episodes and the main plot. Nothing new, slightly flat characters, but a whole lot of entertainment.

That said, it's interesting how much derivative the show is. The locations, the iconography of the ghosts, the dynamics between ghost and characters... everything seems to convey a sense of deja-vu. And it's surprising how much this show tries NOT to be British while still remaining it; the reference is more or less the recent American horror (and, indirectly, the Japanese new wave) but many things in the production (good lookin', sexy actors; cinematography; editing, ecc...) just seem to try and be in that trend, maybe to be "easy". On the other side, a kind of British aftertaste still remains and the writing (characters issue aside) is really good.

It has it's flaws, but still works better and better each episode, till the great, though a bit "tecnical", final cliffhanger.

Ignore the flaws - this show is terrific.

Cast is terrific, even if the characters motivations and history are almost non existent. Theo James is brilliant as the main character, a person who not only sees ghosts but how they die. Charlotte salt is also a standout but her character lacks a back story to explain why she is the way she is.

The setting is terrific - an old asylum, renovated as a high level apartment building. Oh, and it is haunted! Each episode is well directed, music is spot on for frights, and the writing is excellent. Each episode delves into the history of the asylum with the lives of the new tenants triggering off the ghosts.

While I am a huge fan of British TV an American season length would enable more character depth. 6 episodes are just not enough!

Sorry. I hope they either make it more scary, or cancel it.

It is a young peoples soap opera, just like Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place.

it is just so....well, not scary. There isn't enough creepy stuff, but if there were more, everyone with a brain would just move out.

Please cancel this show. Do it softly, and file it with Outcasts and Defying Gravity.

Do these directors and producers know about Event Horizon, or Battlestar Galactica? They need to watch them carefully before making any more "scary" soap opera's or good Sci-Fi drama's.

Thanks!

Chris

The much advertised first episode of Bedlam aired on Monday. While it is a good premise for a show, the idea of a creepy mental asylum is an exhausted location in TV and film (Kingdom Hotel, Shutter Island, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, even Supernatural had an episode based on a haunted asylum).

The first episode ' Cohabitants' centers around Kate, an estate agent working with the sale of Bedlam Heights, a mental asylum being renovated into apartments. The character of Kate sort of rubbed me the wrong way, she came across as cold and uncaring to me. Kate lives in Bedlam Heights with her flatmates, Ryan and Molly. Her cousin, Jed, turns up to 'Save Kate' after he receives numerous text messages from an undisclosed source.

The characters are not very deep and the acting is a tiny bit stilted, I hope there will be more time given in future episodes to learn more about their histories, as it seemed we were only given a crash course into their past. There was subplot, involving Ryan's brother who had died a year ago but not much else was mentioned about Ryan's life.

I don't see how they'll stretch a whole season out of it, the plot has a lot of clichés and it was quite slow moving in parts.It is defiantly influenced by the horrors and thrillers that have gone before it. Having said that, Will Young put in a surprisingly strong performance and the action scenes were quite well done. For a British show with a low budget, it's a breath of fresh air for Monday night viewing. I'll be very interested to see how the show and its characters progress and I will be tuning in next week.