The Trash Pile – 2022 in Netflix

I watch a lot of Trash. That stuff that people scoff at for being cheap, trope-ridden genre fiction. Well, guess what? I don’t care. It’s great. It’s TV that gives back way more than it asks of you (which is: ‘nothing’). It sustains me. Please take the ratings below not as actual reviews, but as niche, dumb jokes. Here’s a celebration of 2022’s finest genre trash!

First Kill

I felt quite offended at First Kill wasn’t recommended to me until after I saw Rowan Ellis’ video on queer TV shows getting cancelled. It was a hit with the LGBT+ audience for its sapphic lead characters, playing supernatural Romeo and Juliette as a vampire and vampire hunter who fall in love – because of course they would.

But, to be honest, it’s pretty clear why the numbers completing the series were low. Despite a strong enough start, it suffers from some unimaginative vampire/monster lore (it could be straight up fan fiction of any number of other series from Buffy to Supernatural) and held together with some ropey, confusing moments — like, does the world know that these monsters and vampires are real? Or are they playing at mass hysteria? The show doesn’t seem to know. Or, at least, it glossed over it very quickly.

Still solidly entertaining if you’re into this sort of thing. At its heart it’s a queer love story if the kind we need more of. You could spend 10 episodes doing much, much worse.

6 sapphic wall-pinning moments out of 10

Fate: The Winx Saga (season 2)

As an adaptation of the cartoon series The Winx Club — about fairies and their adventures in a magical school and the wider conspiracies and threats to their realm — this series has made a lot of fans of the original very, very angry. Of course it has. It’s an adaptation. Fans of an original hating the adaptation is a given, it’s hardly “man bites dog”.

I quite like the setting of this one more than the story. It isn’t afraid to throw social media and mobile phones at a magical world (unlike other stories set in magic schools that contrive to remove the mod-cons that might be inconvenient to the plot…), and it really feels like a functional world with people and politics. There’s wholesome friendship themes throughout, making a nice change from the Grimdark of other popular shows. Though it jars with some of the plot, which can be pretty heavy, even gruesome at times.

I’m unsure about Season 2. Some interesting twists, focused plot, clear stakes, but… did they toss out a bunch of things set up at the end of Season 1? Or felt like a self-contained aside compared to get broader themes if Season 1. If it’s got this far, hopefully a 3rd will bring that all together.

5 slightly dodgy VFX shots out of 10

Fort Salem (season 3)

Good god I love this series. Absolutely unironically. The premise is that witches are real and, after the Salem Trials, witches were conscripted into the army to do the United States’ dirty work in winning the War of Independence. Now they have to face off against magical terrorists (including a unique and terrifying use of the term “suicide bomb”) and then later a secretive inquisition and the government itself.

The thing I really noticed is how the world building works seemlessly. Witches aren’t just conscripted into the Army, they are the Army. So, since witches do all the fighting magically, and can communicate telepathically, firearms and communications technology are pretty far behind the real-world — everything from the helicopters to TV cameras and even the light bulbs, and the complete lack of computers and phones makes sense. The show never labours this point or even points it out to you, it’s just in the setting and direction. The characters act like they already know what is going on. Add to that a well-developed magic system based around witches voices and sound (and some grisly corollaries about how normal humans can steal that power…), and it’s little wonder that many people assume (incorrectly!) that it’s a book adaptation.

Season 3 continues with the remarkable world building as the main cast go on the run into the Chippewa Cession — a feature of this alternate North America that divides the United States in two, retained by Native Americans.

It won’t get another season. But that’s the decision of the producers, not because it’s fading in quality and ratings (apparently). It’s come to a natural end, with plenty of scope to explore the working world it’s set in, but it’s raised its stakes about as far as it can get before it gets far too silly and incomprehensible. More TV should go out like this rather than hanging on and degrading to nothing.

Also, they’re hawt nubile witches who (at least in the first season) power up by fucking their harem of equally hawt, ripped, young studs. So, let’s be clear, even though I think this is a genuinely good series in the urban fantasy genre, this is absolutely God Tier Trash.

9 My fucking god! These witches gay. Good for them! Good for them! out of 10

Warrior Nun (season 2)

This is very, very loosely based on the comic series Warrior Nun Areala, which you can look up, but if I say “90s comic book” and “fighting nuns” you’d probably get the gist of it without help. Anyway the TV version strips out the split skirts, suspender straps, crotch-hugging body suits and wimples in favour of more leather, tactical gear and sensible footwear.

I genuinely think that the first 10 minutes of the very first episode is a masterclass in how to introduce a series. It lays out the rules of the world you’re in. It shows, rather than tells. And, impressively, the dialogue says everything you need to know without sounding lile forced exposition — the characters talk to each other like they already know what’s going on. So, I was a little disappointed that the opening episode of Season 2 took nearly half an hour to get going. It jumps around, trying to catch up after events that weren’t shown — and unfortunately couldn’t even be filmed due to the sudden departure of one of the actors that would be needed for it. So the connective tissue between the two seasons has been left as something of a mess.

Oh well, shit happens…

Once you get over that, Season 2 definitely raises the stakes and the action much more. It keeps the pace up where Season 1’s mid-game slowed to a crawl (if you happened to leave at that point, do give it another shot!) and they’ve toned down some of the voice over that left a cringe aftertaste during the first season.

Blood, guns, knives, magic, mystery, mayhem, demons, and minute-long single-take fights. There is nothing not to love about this. What? Check the title of the post, you weren’t expecting high brow Citizen Kane stuff were you?

8 overproduced fight scenes out of 10

October Faction

October Faction was released in 2020, as an adaptation of a comic that, obviously, I hadn’t heard of, so I got around to watching it this year and I’m including it now. (maybe I can retroactively do 2016 and talk at length about The Shannara Chronicles…)

Anyways, this is fairly normal monster hunting stuff. Secret societies protecting the world from invading supernatural beasties etc. So far so good. But this one does a good bit of storytelling about family, and parents coming to terms with getting older and their children becoming independent. That’s at least a novel feature of a densely packed field of supernatural dramas with a 15 Certificate. Like First Kill, the supernatural elements are the setting, not the story, so it doesn’t really need that uniqueness — even though it does weaken it a bit.

But, overall… meh. It didn’t quite grip me, and it looks like it didn’t grip many people as it got canned after one series. Which is a shame, as it does have its moments! Such as the two leads getting baked on weed before having to go on a monster hunt and that the high school angst that’s done pretty well. It could have grown a lot — but that’s the world we’re in now, and it won’t get the chance to.

5 stoned Gen X parents out of 10

The Imperfects

I went into this fully expecting it to be terrible. And, let’s be clear, I like terrible. Or, at least, my definition of ‘terrible’ greatly differs to most normal and well-adjusted people. But I did not have the highest expectations.

But, I was pleasantly surprised!

The Imperfects has a lot going for it. It’s a nice mix of the standard tropes — like one character who I’m pretty sure is referred to as Sexy Science Glasses Lady in the script — to the unusual twists on the usual and played-out tropes — our typical vampires/werewolves are replaced by a banshee, a succubus, and a chupacabra, to start.

Okay, sure, they’re basically C-List vampires and werewolves. Fine.

Rhys Nicholson’s camp take on a mad scientist might grate most people, but it’s a refreshing change to “grey haired men with serious faces and fake German accents” you see normally for far stock character. And there’s some unexpected but clever twists I didn’t see coming, along with its surprisingly high body count delivered by often-comic, accidental violence.

The whole thing is more “science gone wrong” than supernatural, but despite playing very fast and loose with the science it’s all… kind of plausibly done? The jargon seems like it’s come from someone who knows what they’re talking about, but gives it enough artistic licence not to kill the fun of the series. I had to take a moment on hearing cyclodextrin and t-butyl lithium used more or less correctly. Someone on the production has to be a chemist, surely.

Also, it’s always a good sign when your show could have someone’s shoe collection act as a character in its own right.

8 gratuitous bondage scenes out of 10

Honourable Mentions (the non-trash class of 22)

Stranger Things 4 was a huge hit, and felt to me like a much more focused, stronger story than the rambling 2 and 3. Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville upgraded its budget from “IOUs for back rubs” to “more money than god” and was totally worth it. She-Hulk and Ms Marvel got review-bombed by sad-act arseholes who hate fun. We got another Space Force, which was totally stupid in all the right ways, but I still think it could learn a lot from Armano Ianucci if it wants to be a satire. Speaking if whom, Avenue 5 came back after an extended pandemic-induced break. There was another round of Love Death & Robots, which was a good mix of tense and silly. And of course, the year was dominated by Gaiman’s The Sandman, which bravely asked the question “what if Doctor Who was depressed?”, and is an absolute no-brainer to get renewed, so get to it, Netflix, you bastards!

In fact, Netflix, you bastards, does come out of my mouth more often than it should…