Cassie (Christina Cole), a student at a British boarding school,
is having a very hard time fitting in. She’s very shy, and feels like an outcast
among the "cool kids" in the school. Cassie’s roommate Thelma (Jemima Rooper) is
a fellow social outcast and is proud of it: she’s a lesbian, and doesn’t care
who knows it (in fact, if the right women know, then all the better for her).
Unfortunately life is about to get a lot harder on both women. Cassie discovers
a magical vase on the grounds of the school, which was once the private home of
a wealthy slave trader and his unhappy wife. When Cassie accidentally cuts her
finger on the vase, a drop of her blood falls inside, signaling the convergence
of dark forces--including Cassie’s own nascent magical powers.
She becomes the target of Azazeal (Michael Fassbender), the leader of a group of
fallen angels. You can tell Azazeal means business from the way he constantly
stalks Cassie, leering at her from afar…which gets kind of annoying after a
while, because, for the longest time, that’s all the damn guy ever does. Hex has
been referred to as being the British version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And
because of this I decided to check it out. I loved the first two episodes of Hex,
which ends with a really surprising twist, and at first I thought I had found a
new favorite TV series to watch. Until it slowly began to unravel from there.
The main narrative thrust is the battle of wills between Cassie and Azazeal, and
as long as it stays on this course, the series is very good.
However, Hex soon proves itself to be really a Gothic soap opera that’s more
interested in the love lives of the various students at the school--as well as
the forbidden romance between Cassie and Azazeal--rather than dealing with the
overall supernatural menace. For instance, in the first few episodes, the school
itself has been set up as being a hotbed of ghostly activity, only to have this
plot device dumped in the second half of the series. Hex also gets lost trying
to tell the allegorical side of it’s story, where Buffy sought a balance
between the allegory and telling the main tale itself (and sometimes even they got
lost, too). Buffy often spoke eloquently about the alienation kids felt in high
school, and the destructive influence of cliques--but at the end of the day,
Buffy still dealt with the most pressing issue: the Big Bad.
This is something that the Hex writers quickly lose sight of, and the result is
that I lost interest in watching this series halfway through. The saving grace
for me were the wonderful performances by Christina Cole and Jemima Rooper as
Cassie and Thelma. Their chemistry is pure gold, and Thelma is a brilliant comic
relief, with some of the best lines in the series. The American version of Hex
actually has several episodes from the second season tacked on at the end of
the first;
which was the way it had aired on BBC/America. The final episode here is Ella
Burns, and it ends on a cliffhanger. The series is not rated, but there’s mild
nudity and plenty of cursing, including the F-bomb. Special features include a ‘making of’ documentary,
and some deleted scenes. Hex is filled with some great moments, but it's just
too uneven as a series overall. I’ll stick with
Buffy.
--SF
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