Lenny Rush stars as the titular Val, a teenage “prince of vampires” whose distaste for feasting on the blood of innocents baffles his hulking father (Tom Davis). But all becomes clear when his mother (Sian Clifford) reveals that he’s actually, secretly, a human – and that he can never tell the rest of the family, on pain of death. The stakes, if you’ll forgive me, are high.
It’s a menagerie of the macabre, even if the costumes look like you could pick them up on the cheap from a branch of WHSmith (or perhaps even TGJones).
As for why it’s taken this long to turn work from one of TV’s greatest comic minds into a TV series, there’s a one-word answer: Ghosts. Producer Shane Allen has openly said that the success of the other BBC supernatural sitcom (starring and written by the likes of Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby and Martha Howe-Douglas) paved the way to bringing this book to screen, and The Reluctant Vampire wears the influence of its supernatural stablemate on its frilly, blood-spattered sleeve.
View Green Video on the source websiteUnlike Ghosts, though, the feel of the series is more explicitly retro, even though it is apparently set in the present day (evidence: someone mentions an Airbnb). The castle furnishings are vintage 70s/80s chic, there’s not a smartphone in sight and as central hero Val, Rush brings a decidedly old-fashioned comic performance to bear. Think Frank Spencer by way of Del Boy, somehow transported to the world of Hammer Horror.
It’s impressive how well Rush, who’s just 17, anchors the series, though he’s often got competition. Davis’s deep-voiced, ruthless vampire King Victor dominates every scene he’s in, Bill Bailey and Ross Noble have good fun as two dim-witted gargoyles, and This Country’s Charlie Cooper (who plays a suspicious human living in the nearby village) does a lot with what could have been a thin role. Watch on, and more and more British comedy stars breeze in to ham it up as various supernatural creatures.
Take the first episode, which includes a scene of Joe Wilkinson’s hippy werewolf, complete with wobbly fake tail, ruining a fancy dinner by mounting the table. It’s not necessarily highbrow humour, even if elsewhere laughs are found with witty wordplay. One may imagine some viewers saying fangs, but no fangs (if you were desperate to imagine them making a laboured pun within their critique).
So, it remains to be seen if The Reluctant Vampire will live on as successfully as its centuries-old undead stars – or indeed Ghosts, which is now about to debut its first feature film, not to mention assorted international spin-offs, which the BBC has been airing in recent months. Having watched three episodes, it’s worth giving it a chance – the world expands, the scrapes get more ridiculous and Rush’s role as the “straight man” evolves into something more nuanced as Val learns more about humans – even if it does lack a little bite.
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