The Secret Order has one thing that Anne Rice’s books are lacking.

Talamasca: The Secret Order, AMC’s newest effort to develop Anne Rice’s fictional universe right into a franchise as fruitful as The Walking Dead, doesn’t bear a lot resemblance to the opposite two AMC collection set in that universe, Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches. Interview has a stalwart however small fanbase, whereas Mayfair Witches is broadly considered a disappointment. Not a roaring begin for what AMC calls “Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe,” however Talamasca, created by John Lee Hancock, may simply repair that.

As conceived by Rice, the Talamasca is a secret society devoted to the examine of the supernatural world. “We watch and we are always there,” goes the group’s clumsy motto, embossed on the thick white enterprise card {that a} girl calling herself Helen (Elizabeth McGovern) arms to current graduate Guy Anatole (Nicholas Denton) after he emerges triumphant from a job interview with a New York regulation agency. Helen additionally makes a job supply to Guy—who, not by the way, can learn minds—however she’s fairly cagey concerning the nature of the work.

In Rice’s novels the Talamasca observes one thing just like the Prime Directive in Star Trek: They compile details about vampires, witches, and demons, however don’t meddle within the affairs of such creatures. In Talamasca—which options a number of characters from Rice’s books however is in any other case manufactured from recent materials—that noninterventionist mandate has been jettisoned. The collection is basically a supernatural spy drama, replete with all of the goodies of that style: blackmail, double brokers, shady arms offers, renegade operatives, internecine warfare, moles, secure homes, pretend passports, individuals dashing down rain-slicked alleys in warehouse districts, and impossibly wealthy outdated guys laying sinister plans on Chesterfield sofas. Plus, vampires and witches. It is great enjoyable—enjoyable sufficient to present the Immortal Universe a much-needed increase with the typical viewer.

The enchantment of Interview with the Vampire, whereas restricted, is potent to the vulnerable. People who wish to see fairly males in fabulous garments swanning round Paris and New Orleans and making lengthy melodramatic professions of affection to one another—effectively, these individuals, largely ladies, actually, actually wish to see that. Interview is principally fanfiction with out a canon. Typically, a TV collection collects a fandom by depicting a platonic relationship between two male characters that the followers wish to think about changing into romantic. With Interview, the collection, following Rice’s lead, skips the preliminaries and cuts straight to the romance, though give attention to the erotic components in fanfiction tends to overshadow what I consider to be its true enchantment: a fantasy through which males discuss in nice and ardent element about their emotions.

Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire—through which the primary character, Louis, will get initiated into vampirism by Rice’s most well-known creation, the rakish Lestat—had an inexpensive quantity of storytelling in it, however by Season 2, the collection idled. Much time was squandered on that least fascinating of topics: the intrigues inside a regional theater firm. Otherwise, the characters largely simply stared at one another with burning want and argued about who liked who and the way a lot.

Plotting was by no means Rice’s forte, and the characters in her Vampire Chronicles novels dedicate numerous time to lounging round picturesquely of their zillion-dollar penthouses, pining for varied estranged lovers and vampire friends. There’s one thing endearingly teenage about these books, the way in which they switch the angst and turmoil of adolescence to their centuries-old protagonists, however listening to actual stay actors declaim Rice’s preposterously florid dialogue wears skinny shortly.

Talamasca makes little effort to duplicate the erotic reveries of Rice’s fiction. No sooner does Guy meet Helen than he’s whisked off to London, the place he goes undercover, directed to make use of his particular skills in a quest for a lacking guide that comprises all of the Talamasca’s misplaced data. Most of the collection’ campiness is frontloaded, particularly within the particular person of Jason Schwartzman, taking part in a vampire in a velvet smoking jacket and press-on nails and having the time of his life. For her half, McGovern has all the time been an Olympic-level smirker, and she or he has loads of alternative to display that aptitude right here. The solely factor extra deliciously absurd than her pretend British accent is her silver pageboy wig.

Once Guy will get to London, nonetheless, Talamasca, underneath Hancock’s route, turns into a brisk espionage yarn, with Guy attempting concurrently to assist Helen in her mission and to trace down his beginning mom, a long-missing Talamasca agent. Also in play is a vampire with a style for modern nation music named Jasper (William Fichtner), who’s creating a military of half-vampire minions, senseless, moldering monsters bearing a robust resemblance to zombies. No one Guy meets is kind of what they appear to be, and he finds his loyalties swinging wildly. Is the Talamasca good or dangerous? Who’s telling Guy essentially the most lies and why? What actually occurred to his mother?

Talamasca is effectively paced throughout its six episodes and options a few real twists—narrative accomplishments which might be few and much between in Rice’s novels. Fans of her work might object to how a lot the brand new collection departs from the novels’ brooding gothic charms, however then once more, these viewers have Interview with the Vampire and the promise of a 3rd season through which Sam Reid’s beautiful Lestat will get to prance round onstage as a rock star. For viewers with different appetites, Talamasca may effectively generate wider enthusiasm for the Anne Rice Immortal Universe. And whereas Mayfair Witches was a misstep for AMC, showrunners rather less beholden to Rice’s specific imaginative and prescient, like Hancock, may nonetheless discover methods to rework the huge work of her creativeness into exhibits that the remainder of us wish to watch, with or with out the gorgeous males.