The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books)

by Jones, Stephen

  Lifetime’s unauthorised biopic Magic Beyond Words: The J. K. Rowling Story featured Poppy Montgomery as the struggling young Harry Potter writer and proved, if there was any doubt, just how boring being an author really is.

  For the first time since its 2005 revival, the BBC’s Doctor Who totally lost the plot (literally) under new show-runner Steven Moffat. Matt Smith’s increasingly annoying time traveller faced his “final” days as he and his various companions bumbled their way through thirteen episodes that culminated in a ludicrously complicated finale that totally failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the season’s multiple plots.

  Neil Gaiman, Mark Gattis and Toby Whithouse scripted episodes, and guest stars included Frances Barber, Hugh Bonneville, Lily Cole, James Corden, Ian McNeice, Simon Callow, Mark Gattis, David Walliams, and Alex Kingston as the no-longer-enigmatic River Song.

  As usual, the Christmas special, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, was also a disappointment, as the Doctor whisked a wartime widow (the excellent Claire Skinner) and her two children off to a Narnia-like winter wonderland filled with menace. Guest stars Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong were completely wasted, thanks to Moffat’s lacklustre script.

  Earlier in the year, viewers of the children’s show Blue Peter took part in a competition to design a new version of the central console of the TARDIS.

  Despite an injection of cash from America’s Starz network, the BBC’s ten-part mini-series Torchwood: Miracle Day, in which the usually immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) was the last man in the world who could die, was ultimately disappointing, despite solid support from series regular Eve Myles and new team members Mekhl Phifer and Alexa Havins. The impressive list of US guest-stars included Bill Pullman (as a creepy paedophile-murder), Lauren Ambrose, Wayne Knight, C. Thomas Howell, Ernie Hudson, John de Lancie, Nana Visitor and Frances Fisher.

  Angela Pleasence popped up as a psychic bag lady, Peter Bowles played an old newspaper editor, and the intrepid reporter adopted an alien daughter in the BBC’s fifth and sadly final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which only ran for three two-part episodes in October due to the death of its star, Elisabeth Sladen.

  Although ostensibly aimed at young adults, BBC 3’s six-part The Fades was one of the best and darkest supernatural shows of the year as teenage outsider Paul (Ian de Caestecker) discovered that he was really one of a group of “Angelics” that could see the cannibalistic dead, who were returning in corporeal form to wreak revenge upon the living and bring about an apocalyptic future. Daniel Kaluuya as Paul’s geeky friend Mac managed to keep the tone of Jack Thorne’s superior series from getting too dark.

  At the beginning of February British TV came up with not just one, but two haunted house series. Based on an unproduced 2008 pilot for an American show called The Oaks, ITV’s Marchlands was about three families living in the same rambling old house in 1968, 1987 and 2010, who were all connected by the restless spirit of a drowned eight-year-old girl. Atmospherically told over five one-hour episodes, the increasingly spooky series featured Jodie Whittaker, Alex Kingston, Dean Andrews, Denis Lawson and Anne Reid amongst its impressive ensemble cast.

  Less impressive was Bedlam, the first original drama commission from cable TV channel Sky Living, in which no horror cliché was left unturned by its three soap opera creators. Over six episodes, former mental illness patient Jed Harper (Theo James), who could see ghosts and how they died, and his only likeable flatmate Ryan McAllister (Pop Idol winner Will Young) investigated multiple hauntings in Bedlam Heights, a creepy apartment block converted from an old insane asylum. Coincidentally, the first episode also involved the vengeful ghost of a drowning victim.

  Neither show was as outright ludicrous as FX’s thirteen-part American Horror Story, but what would you expect from the people who brought you Nip/Tuck and Glee? Connie Britton, Dylan McDermot and Taissa Farmiga were the dysfunctional Harmon family who moved into an old Los Angeles mansion, only to discover that it was not only haunted by the world’s most dysfunctional ghosts, but that they had also inherited the neighbour from hell (a scene-stealing Jessica Lange). A two-part Halloween episode introduced Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears as a deceased gay couple, Mena Suvari guest-starred as the 1940s “The Black Dahlia” murder victim, and pretty much everybody ended up dead (if not gone) at the end.

  The second season of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s gruesome six-part comedy horror series Psychoville from the BBC saw the return of embittered clown Mr Jelly (Shearsmith) and Imelda Staunton’s mysterious company director Grace Andrews, and the introduction of obsessive librarian Jeremy Goode (Shearsmith again), who was haunted by a Silent Singer (also Shearsmith). Christopher Biggins and American director John Landis both had cameos in the second episode.

  More soap opera than science fiction, the BBC’s eight-part Outcasts followed the trials and tribulations of a group of bickering Earth settlers trying to build a new future on a distant planet called Carpathia. Unfortunately, despite an ensemble cast that included Liam Cunningham, Hermoine Norris, Daniel Mays, Eric Mabius and Jamie Bamber (whose character was killed-off in the first episode), not only was the show a dull reworking of the 1994–95 series Earth 2, but the central mystery also owed much to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. The series was quickly moved to another time-slot because of disappointing viewing figures.

  Despite occasional flashes of welcome humour, the third season of the BBC’s Being Human was a grim affair as vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) rescued ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) from Purgatory and was forced to face the consequences of his bloody massacre of a passenger train in the previous series.

  While werewolves George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) found themselves expecting a baby, unexpected visitors dropping by the housemates’ new Barry Island home included teenage vampire Adam (Craig Roberts), who was really forty-six years old; party-loving zombie girl Sasha (Alexandra Roach); werewolf traveller McNair (Robson Green) and his son Tom (Michael Socha); stressed-out social worker Wendy (Nicola Walker); persistent policewoman Nancy Reid (Erin Richards), and mysteriously resurrected vampire Herrick (Jason Watkins), who claimed to have lost his memory.

  An eight-part spin-off show, Becoming Human, was available on the BBC website (and subsequently edited-together as a TV special). It involved schoolboy vampire Adam (Roberts again) teaming up with a werewolf (Leila Mimmack) and a human (Josh Brown) to solve a mystery.

  Relocated to Boston, an American version of Being Human starred Sam Witwer as vampire Aidan, Meaghan Rath as ghost Sally and Sam Huntington as werewolf Josh. The first season aired over thirteen episodes on the Syfy channel.

  In the second season of Syfy’s Haven, loosely based on a Stephen King story, all the main protagonists discovered that there were secrets in their past they never knew about.

  Bi-sexual succubus Bo (Anna Silk) learned to work with the Fae, despite the new Ash (Vincent Walsh), while werewolf detective Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) sacrificed his ability to love in the second season of Syfy’s Lost Girl.

  The third season of the channel’s enjoyable Warehouse 13 saw the return of Jaime Murray’s terrific H. G. Wells, while Eureka’s Douglas Fargo (Neil Grayson) made a return visit to the Warehouse, which was apparently destroyed in the season finale. Kate Mulgrew, Anthony Michael Hall and Aaron Ashmore joined the cast as semi-regulars.

  The third series of Syfy’s Sanctuary ended with the inhabitants from Hidden Earth coming to the surface, and the fourth season kicked off with Dr Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) travelling back in time to Victorian London to prevent Adam Worth from changing history. In the two-part finale, Magnus put her long-term plans for the Sanctuary network into action, as Caleb (Gil Bellows) plotted to turn the human race into Abnormals.

  Syfy’s likeable Eureka (aka A Town Called Eureka) ended its fourth season with an accidental spaceship launch, but it was back three months later with a Christmas special in which everyone was turned into carto
on characters.

  Based on the series of dark and gory high fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, HBO’s terrific ten-part Game of Thrones was, quite simply, one of the year’s best TV dramas in any genre. The superlative cast included Sean Bean (whose lead character was surprisingly killed off in the penultimate episode), a scene-stealing Peter Dinklage, Mark Addy, Lena Headey and Jason Momoa.

  With its fourth season, HBO’s True Blood finally inherited the mantle of 1960s daytime soap opera Dark Shadows as Sookie (Anna Paquin) returned from fairyland to find that Fiona Shaw’s possessed witch had cast a spell over Eric (Alexander Skarsgård), causing him to lose much of his memory.

  In a major departure from the original books, a leading character was surprisingly killed off by Skarsgård’s vampire, and the season finale featured the shocking deaths of three, or possibly four, other major characters. Veterans William Schallert and Katherine Helmond turned up in nice cameos.

  The sixth season of Showtime’s Dexter jumped ahead a year as Michael C. Hall’s killer-with-a-code encountered a pair of religious “Doomsday Killers” (Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks), a reformed Brother Sam (rapper-actor Mos Def), a septuagenarian serial killer (veteran Ronny Cox) and his own dead brother (Christian Camargo).

  With its delayed fourth and fifth seasons filmed in Ireland, ITV’s always bonkers Primeval returned in January for seven episodes as Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearitt) escaped the Cretaceous Period only to find that the ARC (Anomaly Research Centre) had been rebuilt and was now controlled by mysterious magnate Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig), who had his own secret agenda. Despite the introduction of a new team of dinosaur-hunters, previous cast members Lucy Brown and Jason Flemyng returned for an episode apiece.

  The series was back with a further six shows in May, and included an episode in which a velociraptor was accidentally sent back to 1868 London, where it gave rise to the legend of “Spring-heeled Jack”.

  There were more CGI dinosaurs in Fox’s much-delayed Terra Nova, executive produced by Steven Spielberg, in which the annoying Shannon family (led by Jason O’Mara and Shelley Conn) travelled back from a dystopian future to 85 million years in the past to make a new life for themselves in what was basically a thirteen-part reworking of Land of the Lost with added rebel factions and conspiracy sub-plots.

  Not content with boring audiences rigid with the family values of Terra Nova, Steven Spielberg also executive produced TNT’s tedious War of the Worlds-inspired Falling Skies, in which a history professor (E.R.’s Noah Wyle) and a rag-tag group of resistance fighters mostly talked their way through yet another alien invasion of Earth.

  If Terra Nova and Falling Skies could make dinosaurs and alien invasions dull, then AMC’s increasingly pointless The Walking Dead was guilty of doing the same thing with zombies, as the ever-dwindling band of survivors (led by Andrew Lincoln’s cuckold Sheriff) took refuge on a seemingly-tranquil rural farm until they went and looked at what was kept in the barn. It was perhaps no surprise that creator and executive producer Frank Darabont stepped down as showrunner after just a few episodes into the second season.

  Despite its lethargic pacing, the show still managed to rank as the top-rated cable TV drama amongst young adults in the US, with average viewing numbers of nine million.

  Sam (Jared Padalecki) returned from Hell without a soul, and angel Castiel (Misha Collins) went off the rails in the disappointing sixth series of The CW’s Supernatural. In the best episode of the season, Sam and Dean (Jensen Ackles) were transported to an alternate reality, where they were actors in a TV series called . . . Supernatural.

  The seventh season kicked off with the brothers trying to find a way to stop a power-mad Castiel, and Buffy cast members Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters turned up as a pair of bickering married witches.

  The third season of The CW’s unwatchably awful The Vampire Diaries was joined by the equally turgid teen witch series, The Secret Circle, also based on a bunch of books by L. J.Smith and executive produced by Kevin Williamson. At least Natasha Henstridge was on hand in the latter show to chew up the scenery as a scheming older witch.

  Looking as if it was filmed on a $5.00-per-episode budget, Brighter in Darkness was an amateurish half-hour gay vampire soap opera filmed in and around Wales that ran for eight interminable episodes on a cut-price UK cable TV channel.

  Michael Emerson’s billionaire scientist and Jim Caviezel’s former CIA hitman teamed up to prevent crimes before they happened with the help of a handy gizmo in CBS’ Person of Interest, executive produced by J. J. Abrams.

  NBC’s Grimm featured David Giuntoli as a homicide detective, the descendant of the eponymous clan of supernatural hunters, who discovered that the fairy tales were based on fact. Silas Weir Mitchell’s reluctant werewolf sidekick was the best thing about the show.

  Fairy tale characters inhabited two different worlds in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, which debuted with an impressive 12.8 million viewers and became the highest-rated new drama amongst adults in the US.

  Meanwhile, the parallel universes merged in the fourth season of Fox’s underrated Fringe, where for a while it seemed as if Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) had never existed.

  Xander Berkeley played a mysterious patron who sat in a diner and helped people solve their problems in Hulu’s five-part series The Booth at the End, which was also available as webisodes.

  MTV’s reboot of the 1980s movie franchise Teen Wolf was an entertaining and edgy twelve-part series aimed at young adults. Tyler Posey’s likeable high school student Scott McCall found himself turning into a werewolf just as he discovered that the girl of his dreams (Crystal Reed) came from a long line of werewolf hunters. Unfortunately, the show premiered in a graveyard slot in the US.

  Death Valley was a spoof mockumentary series on MTV about the LAPD’s Undead Task Force dealing with criminal vampires, werewolves, zombies and other supernatural creatures while being trailed around by a camera crew.

  Stoner metalhead Todd Smith (Alex House) and his high school friends continued to search for the Satantic book of spells in the half-hour Fear Net comedy series Todd & the Book of Pure Evil.

  A supposedly dead cop (David Lyons) donned the superhero outfit and teamed up with an investigative blogger named Orwell (Summer Glau) to bring down her father’s evil corporate company in NBC’s enjoyable superhero series The Cape, which ran for only ten episodes.

  Over at Syfy, Glau also guest-starred on the eleven-part Alphas, a dropped ABC pilot in which David Strathairn’s scientist was the leader of a group of five ordinary people with extraordinary abilities who battled to save the world from a secret terrorist organisation called Red Flag.

  In the third series of the E4’s eight-part Misfits, the gang of super-powered young offenders decided to change their powers and had to deal with an alternate reality involving time-travelling Nazis. Meanwhile Seth (Matthew McNulty) used his resurrection power to bring his former girlfriend back from the grave as a bloodthirsty zombie, and the gang ended up encountering a fake medium who had the power to call their fallen foes back from the dead.

  ABC Family’s The Nine Lives of Chloe King was about a sixteen-year-old girl (Syler Samuels) who found out that she was descended from an ancient race of half-humans with feline powers.

  Following an hour-long opener, Nickelodeon’s House of Anubis was shown in forty-five daily ten-minute instalments and involved a group of eight students investigating mysterious disappearances at an English boarding school. It averaged almost three million viewers in the US and was also available online.

  In the six-part The Sparticle Mystery, a group of children discovered that everybody on Earth over the age of fifteen had been transported to a parallel dimension when an experiment went wrong.

  Nathaniel Parker joined the fourth season of the BBC’s increasingly impressive Merlin as Arthur’s duplicitous uncle, Agravaine. The thirteen-part series featured Lancelot (Santiago Cabrera) sacrificing himself and then returning from t
he dead; the discovery of the last remaining dragon’s egg; an encounter with a vampire-like Lamia; the possessive spirit of murdered Druid child; the introduction of Tristan and Isolde, and an epic two-part finale in which the evil Morgana (Katie McGrath) led a full-on assault upon Camelot.

  Eva Green’s far sexier “Morgan” also took over Arthur’s fabled city in the otherwise redundant ten-part Starz series Camelot, which also featured Joseph Fiennes as an older and dirtier version of Merlin.

  The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXII on Fox included lame spoofs of Dexter and Avatar, while Mike Judge’s animated Beavis and Butt-Head returned to MTV in October with an episode in which the two stupid-smart buffoons poked fun at the Twilight movies as the dumb duo tried to get themselves bitten by a werewolf so they could attract girls.

  Liam Neeson and Peter Mayhew voiced their characters Qui-Gon Jinn and Chewbacca, respectively, in different episodes of the Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

  Wolverine and Iron Man both got anime makeovers, while 1980s cartoon Thundercats was revived for a new generation of potential toy consumers.

  James Roday and Dulé Hill’s comedy investigators went undercover as Tom Cruise’s Lestat and William Marshall’s Blacula, respectively, in a vampire-themed Halloween episode of USA Network’s Psych, while Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Beckett (Stana Katic) investigated the death of a TV ghost-hunter in a supposedly haunted mansion in the Halloween episode of ABC’s Castle.

  The recent publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula resulted in a number of apparent vampire attacks at an exclusive girl’s school in a fourth season episode of Canada’s Murdoch Mysteries. In another episode, the uptight detective (Yannick Bisson) investigated what seemed to be a case of demonic possession.

  For its special Super Bowl episode in February, Fox’s Glee included a performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, complete with a zombie football team.