Since she wrote and directed one of my favorite shorts from a recent year, I have followed up with more from Yulin Kuang and found that not only is she smarter and funnier than I, but she is also much better read. I am not 100% sure, but I have the feeling that I know Edgar Allan Poe from Hammer Horror movies of the 1970's, or maybe from the Simpsons episode – because otherwise I could not tell you of a time that I have sat and read his work; indeed I only know of Poe's connection to Baltimore because of David Simon's Homicide, but I digress. With what little knowledge I have of him (pretty much The Raven), I started to watch this short webseries where Poe starts a video blog, with the support of the ghost of Lenore – who is perhaps not quite the rare and radiant maiden that you may believe.
Having seen a few short films from the same comedy group, I had already seen the way they take literary characters and update them to the modern times, so in this case it was not a surprise when Lenore started speaking like a valley girl. This depiction is funny – for me not because I know the character other than her being referenced in The Raven, but more because it clashes so much with the setting and the character of Poe. Sinead Persaud does this very well, and plays the stereotype of a video blogger really well, but it is her brother Sean that has the harder job. Mostly he plays Poe very straight and it is this that makes the juxtaposition with Lenore funnier; although he also has plenty of nice awkward and introverted stuff to play with too.
It is a simple series, with each episode only 90-120 seconds long, but it is well pitched in the world of vlogging, but yet with an awareness of the literature behind the characters – I guess I probably only got half of it, but even still I found that to be funny, clever, and delivered with two very good comic performances.
