Lost Girl – season 1 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2010

Contains spoilers

“What are you doing?” You could well ask. After all the series Lost Girl is about a succubus rather than a vampire. However, you know what, there are similarities between succubi and a certain type of vampire. Admittedly, I did consider a ‘Vamp or Not?’ but that will be covered in this first couple of paragraphs anyway, and also considered an Honourable Mention – but to be fair the vampiric activity happens in virtually each episode. You see our main character, Bo (Anna Silk), is a succubus and because of this she feeds of energy, or chi, by drawing it through the mouth or through sex.

Yes, her feeding habits are akin to an energy vampire and, to a degree, I was reminded of lifeforce… ok she kills rather than zombiefies her victims, can’t turn into a bat-like alien creature and is purely terrestrial in origin. In fact there is a lot less nudity too but she does remind me of Malthida May in that film, just a little. The various creatures in the series are collectively known as fae, all of whom hide in plain sight and feed on humans one way or another and this makes her a natural, albeit magical, entity (unlike a standard myth succubus, who would be a demon).

sucking chi

As the series starts she is a barmaid and a creepy customer tries to slip her a date rape drug. Having turned him down he targets a young human woman called Kenzi (Ksenia Solo). Bo rescues Kenzi and sucks the life energy from the would-be-rapist, she then takes the girl home to her squat, to sleep off the drug, and makes plans to leave town. Kenzi, however, filmed the kill but also recognises that Bo is someone to be on the same side as. From here on in the core friendship at the heart of the show is forged. There is also mention of vampirism, something Bo denies as blood is not involved. She does admit to a building hunger for energy. However.

Bo's victim

Unfortunately her kill has been found and the investigating cops are Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried, Underworld Awakening & The Death of Alice Blue) and Hale (K.C. Collins), both fae and a lycanthrope and siren respectively. They catch Bo and she discovers what she is, you see as a newborn baby she was spirited away from fae society and left with human foster parents. As such she is unaware of the fae, their clans and their great divide.

Ksenia Solo as Kenzi

They are split between light and dark and the fae must choose sides at their coming of age. Bo is forced to go through the old fashioned version of coming of age (a fight to the death with two under-fae, or more monstrous monsters) – the hope of the two sides is she’ll die and the problem of an unregistered, unaligned fae will go away. Through help from Dyson and Kenzi she wins but refuses to join a side, declaring herself neutral and with the humans. She and Kenzi form an odd-case detective agency and she begins to get help from Dyson and Trick (Richard Howland), the owner of a neutral ground bar. Both Trick and Dyson know more than they are telling Bo about her mother and heritage.

Jeffrey R. Smith as Seigfried

We do get some more common vampiric moments but they are frustrating in their brevity. We meet Siegfried (Jeffrey R. Smith). When we meet him he is hanging by a noose, but being a vampire that hasn’t killed him. He drinks blood but is killed quickly in the episode by a mesmer (Paul Amos) who forces Siegfried to push his own hand into a waste disposal, to torture him, and then cuts his own heart out. It is a brief meeting.

Lynne Griffen as Halima

We also meet Halima (Lynne Griffen), an aswang who is poisoned by her food – human cadavers; in this case foot soup. This leads to a haemorrhagic fever, which Kenzi also contracts when she inadvertently eats some of the soup not realising the main ingredient, and Halima’s main role in the episode is to die. Again we see very little of the vampiric creature, a few minutes in episode and, to be honest, it seemed less like an aswang and more like a ghoul in habit.

aswang chow

The series as a whole, however, is good fun. It is nice to see the centre stage be taken by two strong female characters and whilst Bo relies on Dyson as a lover, tipster and food source she seems no weaker as a character for that, cutting Dyson off when he isn’t on the same page as her. I enjoyed the first season, good escapist television with a succubus/energy vampire. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.