Monday, November 2, 2020

Truth Seekers - The Haunting of Connelly's Nook

Horror-Comedy is an odd genre. When it works you get something like Evil Dead 2 or Shaun of the Dead. When it doesn't, you get something... odd. The first episode of Truth Seekers is more the later as it struggles to find the proper tone while introducing the audience to its world. Our main character is cable installer and repairman Gus Roberts (Nick Frost who is also one of the show's creators). In his spare time Gus also investigates the paranormal. The first episode finds Gus saddled with a trainee named Elton John (Samson Kayo) whose attendance in the van and on a couple of calls to Connelly's Nook is propitious to Gus.

"The Haunting of Connelly's Nook" opens with a pair of scenes disconnected from either of our main characters in which Emma D'Arcy's unnamed character is caught in a fire and then wakes up to be haunted in an otherwise abandoned hospital. The sequence is bizarre and quite different in tone from the rest of the episode which is far lighter and goofier (even when Gus and Elton discover a bizarre paranormal experiment in a hidden room of a customer's home). While also one of the show's creators, Simon Pegg is only marginally involved on-camera in the role of Gus' boss meaning the pair's unique chemistry isn't tapped into much here.

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