TV Review: BBC America’s ‘Bedlam’ Plays Like Haunted ‘Melrose Place’

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly versionE-mail page to friendE-mail page to friendPDF versionPDF version
No votes yet

CHICAGO – As much fun as that headline might make it sound, “Bedlam,” premiering stateside tonight, October 1, 2011, on BBC America, is pretty goofy. A little bit of supernatural behavior mixed with cheesy soap dynamics might have made for a fun Autumn diversion but nothing in “Bedlam” is “little.” Everything is so far over-the-top that it can’t even see it any more and the ridiculousness of it all sinks the entertainment value.

HollywoodChicago.com Television Rating: 2.0/5.0
Television Rating: 2.0/5.0

Quick — What are the two most influential shows on the new programming of 2011? The “Mad Men” clones have already aired (with “The Playboy Club” bombing and “Pan Am” still taxiing on the runway) and October brings the “True Blood” copies as supernatural and sexy co-mingle on FX’s “American Horror Story” and BBC America’s “Bedlam.” We’ll cover the former next week (it’s pretty great) but the bad news is that “Bedlam” is the “Playboy Club” in this dynamic — the show that tries to be sexy and smart like its cable competition but misses the mark. There are B-movie elements of the soap opera that work but the whole thing plays like a silly straight-to-DVD horror film chopped up into six weekly installments. If you saw it on DVD with the “After Dark Originals” label, it would fit right in.

Bedlam
Bedlam
Photo credit: BBC America

“Bedlam” opens with a hitchhiker trying to convince his benefactor that he doesn’t need to get home to his wife. The urban legend goes that the pick-up is the ghost but the prologue turns the table to reveal that the reason the driver can’t get home is because he’s the already-dead one and our passenger just happens to be able to communicate with the other side a la Cole from “The Sixth Sense.” Well, it’s not that well-defined. Sometimes he just has feelings. Sometimes he even gets text messages. His ill-defined powers are connected to the supernatural but typically just in a way that’s conducive to the plot or purposefully mysterious.

Bedlam
Bedlam
Photo credit: BBC America

The mysterious passenger is revealed to be the complicated Jed (Theo James of “Downton Abbey”) and he soon receives notice that he has to go help his cousin Kate (Charlotte Salt of “The Tudors”). Why does Kate need help? The poor girl has moved into a new flat with a pair of lovely roommates named Ryan (Will Young) and Molly (Ashley Madekwe). Everything should be great. Oh, I almost forgot that the flat happens to be a room in a renovated asylum called Bedlam Heights. Hint — if there’s ANY part of you that believes in ghosts, a broken-down asylum might not be the best place to live.

Jed keeps getting messages to “Save Kate” while “Bedlam” keeps stringing together scenes either straight out of a soap opera or straight out of a bad haunting movie. The walls in the bathroom leak. Computers don’t turn off. There’s a dripping sound that won’t go away. Jed tries to warn people but few believe him as his previous ghostly proclamations led his family to brand him as crazy.

Jed and Kate aren’t the only family connections in “Bedlam.” Of course, it has to be revealed that Kate’s father (Hugo Speer) is the one who owns Bedlam Heights and has been driving its renovation. And, of course again, it has to be revealed that their family has a troubled connection to the goings-on back when it was still an asylum.

“Bedlam” tries to have it all. It tries to play “who’s sleeping with who” at the same time it plays “who’s haunting who”. Neither half of the show works and the combination of the two is even more poorly handled. “American Horror Story” completely understands the sexual horror of a show like “True Blood,” playing with perception and sexuality in unique ways. “Bedlam” doesn’t successfully merge the sexual dynamics of the soap opera half with the horror cliches of the supernatural half. It’s not quite correct to say it feels like two shows because that would imply that either half feels complete. Instead, it just falls apart in the middle, resulting in a disappointing series that’s not scary, not sexy, and just not memorable.

“Bedlam” stars Charlotte Salt, Theo James, Ashley Madekwe, Hugo Speer, and Will Young. It premieres on BBC America on October 1st, 2011 at 9pm CST.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

User Login

Free Giveaway Mailing

TV, DVD, BLU-RAY & THEATER REVIEWS

  • Manhunt

    CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.

  • Topdog/Underdog, Invictus Theatre

    CHICAGO – When two brothers confront the sins of each other and it expands into a psychology of an entire race, it’s at a stage play found in Chicago’s Invictus Theatre Company production of “Topdog/Underdog,” now at their new home at the Windy City Playhouse through March 31st, 2024. Click TD/UD for tickets/info.

Advertisement



HollywoodChicago.com on Twitter

archive

HollywoodChicago.com Top Ten Discussions
tracker