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The Shannara Chronicles Season One Review

Published

10 years ago

July 2, 2016

Admin

Not Good For Your Elf

Editor-in-chief Joel Meadows slips on his fake ears and unsheaths his sword to give his assessment of MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles Season One

The Shannara Chronicles Season One

Executive Producers: April Blair, David Blocker, Kimberley Boyd, Dan Farah

Stars: Austin Butler, Ivana Baquero, Manu Bennett, Poppy Drayton, Aaron Jakubenko

This fantasy series wouldn’t have been made or even entertained without the huge popularity of Game of Thrones. HBO’s monumentally successful show proved that fantasy, for so long the bastard stepchild of mainstream television, could compete with the other genres. The Shannara books were a very popular sub-Tolkien series in the 1980s and so it wasn’t that surprising that MTV would chose to adapt them for television. It is hard to create a fantasy series that has the dramatic heft and ambition that lends it the sort of gravitas that the best TV drama shows possess. Game of Thrones mostly succeeds thanks to some genuinely intriguing and well-conceived characters like Cersei and Tyrion Lannister and some well-delineated settings. The Shannara Chronicles, about elf princess Amberle Elessedil (Poppy Drayton) and her fellow elves in their fight to survive against a number of supernatural threats, sadly falls between the stools. Shannara is supposed to be our world after some undetermined apocalyptic disaster but its fantasy is clunky and poorly written and the sci fi element, which is only eluded to through images of deserted children’s playgrounds and ruined cities, isn’t fully formed enough to engage with the viewer. It also suffers from horrible MTV editing, all fast cuts, teenage romance which wouldn’t be out of place in Twilight and a cast that veers from embarrassed to incompetent. John Rhys Davies as the elf king Eventine Elessedil looks like he has been dressed by the 1980s Doctor Who costume department and Manu Bennett, who has a pretty impressive fantasy and genre CV that includes Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit and Arrow, just looks very bored. The Shannara Chronicles lacks any sublety and feels like a tea-time BBC Saturday drama which has had a little bit of money thrown at it. None of the characters are remotely interesting or transcend their fantasy archetypes. The plot that sees the elves team up with the trolls to fight against the evil Dagda Mor (Jed Brophy) is so clumsily handled and ham-fisted that it lacks any actual drama or tension. Scarily, a second season has already been commissioned. There obviously is an audience for this sort of series but it pales in comparison with something like Game of Thrones, which it will always inevitably be compared with.

JOEL MEADOWS