RogerBW's Blog

2014-2015: John Constantine, broken magician, must protect the innocent from magical threats.

This is a comic adaptation. While I've read some of Hellblazer, it was many years ago, and I didn't find it all that memorable. So I'm reviewing this purely as a TV series (even if I find it laughable that with all the gore and horror in this show the few occasions on which Constantine is actually seen to smoke were what required major negotation with the network).

So Constantine (always pronounced in the American manner even with a final "-een" although the character's still portrayed as British) is competent at magic but has limited power and a Dark Past. He has a pretty female sidekick (because hey, it's TV), and a few old friends he hasn't yet used up. The basic setup is threat of the week (a plot device says "something dodgy is happening in this town", they go there and get into trouble over their heads, then pull off a last-minute reversal at great personal cost), with a vaguely connecting thread that the "Rising Darkness" is happening and all sorts of magical nasties are suddenly more powerful than they used to be. Other recurrent themes are magic as drugs (it's bad for you and everyone around you), and no easy answers.

It's all fairly toned down because it's being broadcast on an American network, but the show does its best to present tough situations and horrible fates. Special effects are very common, but are generally well-integrated into the show rather than being separate set-pieces, so there's never any loss of emotional connection with the characters.

In the end, it's an enjoyable time-waster but there's nothing terribly challenging here. The comics may have been better. At the time of writing the show has not yet been formally cancelled, but ratings have been poor, there was no extension of the original 13-episode order, and at this point in the year I suspect that everything which is going to be renewed has been.

(Later: Yup. It was cancelled.)