Talamasca: The Secret Order Season 1 (Blu-ray Review)
STARRING: Nicholas Denton, Celine Buckens, Maisie Richardson-Sellers
RATED: 15 (UK)/Region: O/2:00/1080P/NUMBER OF DISCS 2
AVAILABLE FROM Acorn Media
If there’s one thing modern television loves, it’s taking an interesting concept and stretching it out until it resembles a piece of taffy that’s been pulled one too many times. That brings us to Talamasca: The Secret Order Season 1, a show that promises dark secrets, supernatural intrigue, and mysterious organizations… but mostly delivers a lot of brooding conversations in dimly lit rooms.
The series is part of the ever-expanding television universe based on the works of Anne Rice, and focuses on the Talamasca—the shadowy group of scholars who supposedly monitor supernatural events around the world. On paper, that sounds fantastic. Secret societies! Vampires! Occult mysteries! Hidden knowledge! It’s basically a recipe for a thrilling supernatural drama.
Instead, Season 1 often feels like a very serious meeting about possibly doing something interesting later.
Episode after episode teases grand conspiracies and ancient secrets, but most of the time the characters are just standing around discussing files, archives, and vague prophecies while staring intensely at each other like they’re trying to win a brooding contest. The Talamasca, who should feel like an elite supernatural intelligence agency, instead come across as a group of librarians who accidentally wandered into a paranormal investigation show.
And look, there’s nothing wrong with world-building. In fact, good supernatural storytelling needs it. But Talamasca: The Secret Order seems convinced that endlessly explaining its mythology is the same thing as making the mythology interesting. The result is a season that feels like an eight-hour prologue to a much better show that might exist someday.
Visually, the series looks polished enough. There’s plenty of moody lighting, gothic architecture, and ominous music humming in the background like the show really wants you to know something spooky might happen at any moment. The problem is that “any moment” rarely arrives.
The cast does their best with the material, but the scripts give them an uphill battle. Many characters spend so much time delivering cryptic dialogue that it starts to feel like everyone is speaking exclusively in dramatic trailer voice.
“You don’t understand what’s coming.”
“No… you don’t understand.”
“Yes… but what if they do?”
Congratulations—you’ve now heard about half the conversations in the season.
To be fair, the idea behind the series is genuinely intriguing. The Talamasca has always been one of the cooler concepts lurking in Anne Rice’s supernatural world. A secret order quietly documenting monsters should be a goldmine for storytelling. Unfortunately, Season 1 mostly documents paperwork.
By the time the finale rolls around, you’ll likely feel like the show is just about to get exciting… which is probably the most frustrating compliment you can give it.
Talamasca: The Secret Order Season 1 isn’t a complete disaster—it’s well-shot, occasionally atmospheric, and clearly part of a bigger supernatural universe. But as a standalone season of television, it feels less like a gripping mystery and more like the world’s slowest orientation seminar for a very boring secret society.
Extras
- Show Me More: Ann Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order
- Decoding the Episodes
