‘Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order’ Review – A Middling Supernatural Thriller in Search of an Identity

Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole and Justin Kirk as Raglan – Talamasca _ Season 1 – Photo Credit: David Gennard/AMC

After the smash success of Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, AMC’s ongoing shared universe of Anne Rice properties gets just a little bit bigger with Talamasca: The Secret Order. Spinning out of Interview With the Vampire, Talamasca follows the exploits of a secret organization tasked with protecting humanity from all manner of supernatural threats—vampires, witches, you name it. But what should’ve been a home run of a premise ends up landing with a dull thud. Lacking the gravitas of shows like Interview With the Vampire and the excitement of spy thrillers and supernatural detective shows, Talamasca comes across as a show in search of an identity. Let down by wooden, underwritten leads and a plot that never gets off the ground, the whole thing proves a bit more dull than thrilling.

 A Middling Supernatural Spy Thriller…

When Helen (Elizabeth McGovern), the leader of the New York branch of the Talamasca, recruits Guy Anatole (Nicholas Denton), a young man with a gift for reading minds, to spy on the organization’s London branch, Guy finds himself caught in a web decades in the making. For the London branch of the Talamasca has recently come under the control of the mysterious Jasper (William Fichtner), a man on the hunt for a legendary book containing the whole of the Talamasca’s knowledge. But just what is Jasper’s endgame? Tasked with finding the book before Jasper, Guy races against time in a supernatural game of cat and mouse. Put simply, Talamasca has all the pieces necessary to be a bombastic supernatural spy thriller. But, unfortunately, it fumbles right out of the gate and struggles to come into its own over the course of its six episodes.

For starters, the first two episodes are incredibly slow-paced, really luxuriating in setting up the show’s complicated game of chess. The problem is that this pacing is wholly unearned—an endless series of exposition dumps revolving around a pair of characters who come across incredibly unlikable, despite strong performances from Denton and McGovern. The show asks a lot of you in sticking with it as it slowly plods through the motions. The whole thing’s a bit too middling and lackadaisical, lacking the gravitas that makes Interview With the Vampire‘s pacing feel deliberate and emotionally earned. Here, it’s tension-killing and robs this supernatural spy thriller of any, well, thrills.

…With a Few Thrills and Chills

That being said, things do pick up some as the series progresses and settles into itself. The plot itself remains all over the place, a hodgepodge of relatively inventive ideas let down by uneven execution. But there’s still a lot of fun to be had in some of the twists and turns. The show’s real strength, however, lies in the cast’s performances and the moments the show goes full horror. Despite how underwritten Guy is and how the show never seems to know what to do with him, Anatole’s performance breathes life into the character, especially when he’s paired with Fichtner’s Jasper or Justin Kirk’s Raglan (returning from a turn in Interview With the Vampire). And the same is true for McGovern’s Helen, too. On her own, she’s quite wooden, but when paired with Maisie Richardson-Sellers’s manipulative Talamasca agent, Olive, or Jason Schwartzman’s deliciously over-the-top vampire, Burton.

Perhaps even greater than the performances, though, are the show’s visual effects. This is, after all, a vampire show, and there are plenty of vampires to behold here—ones far more horrific than those in Interview With the Vampire. Jasper’s raising an army of ravenous mutant vampires, and they’re exactly as vicious as you’d hope for. Truly monstrous in every way, and leaving untold amounts of gore and viscera in their wake. If you ever felt Interview With the Vampire was a bit too tame, Talamasca certainly picks up the slack in that department. Though the cast’s performances and the show’s visual effects never quite bridge the gaps left by the series’ scripts, they offer a little something to sink your teeth into.

A Show in Search of an Identity

No matter how hard Talamasca tries to reach the lofty heights of Prestige Television that other AMC shows have reached, it just never gets there. In a lot of ways, Talamasca feels like a show in search of an identity. On the one hand, it wants to be a sort of supernatural detective show—a version of The X-Files that exists within the shared universe of Anne Rice’s works. And on the other hand, it seems to be fully content being a very cheesy, somewhat steamy piece of cable television—think along the lines of The Vampire Diaries or True Blood. But as the show straddles these warring identities, it finds itself caught somewhere in between them. It’s never the thrilling supernatural spy show it wants to be, nor is it ever the sexy cable dramaedy it wants to be. It’s just a pale combination of fueding genres.

And that’s all before you factor in that it’s a spin-off of the utterly transcendent Interview With the Vampire (season two of which sets up quite a bit of the Talamasca’s identity). When you hold Talamasca up against Interview With the Vampire, it falls pretty hard on its face. But not only does Talamasca pale in comparison to the show it’s spun off of, it also pales in comparison to other AMC shows. In truth, it feels more at home on a channel like SYFY, complete with its clunky dialogue and really hokey-looking visual effects. Put simply, if you’re looking for something to hold you over until The Vampire Lestat premieres next year, Talamasca‘s not gonna quench your thirst.

Final Thoughts

Despite picking up steam in its final few episodes, Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order never reaches the lofty goals of its premise nor the transcendent delights of the series it’s spun out of. While there’s some good stuff here, including some stellar performances and some truly horrific visual effects, the narrative itself is all over the place. At times, far too middling to maintain the tension required by a supernatural spy thriller, but simultaneously too quickly paced to have any real impact, ultimately ending on a cliffhanger that feels both unearned and destined to be unresolved. But at heart, Talamasca just feels like a show in search of an identity, lost somewhere between the excitement of a supernatural spy thriller and the campy delights of a steamy cable drama. And that’s a bit of a shame.

Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order premieres Sunday, October 26, at 9 pm ET on AMC and AMC+ with two episodes. New episodes premiere Sundays at 9 pm on AMC and AMC+.