Zapped: The Party – review

Director: Dave Lambert

First aired: 2017

Contains spoilers

I was contacted by my friend Everlost who told me that episode 3 of season 2 of Zapped was a vampire episode. Now, I must admit that I hadn’t heard of Zapped, much less seen an episode but dutifully I sought it out.

Zapped is a UK fantasy series concerning Brian Weaver (James Buckley) an office worker who received a package addressed to someone in a place called Munty. Opening it and putting on an amulet in the package he is teleported to the town of Munty in a fantasy world where magic works.

James Buckley as brian

In the episode Brian is bored of the clientele in the tavern The Jug and the Other Jug, and on hearing about a trendy new bar at the docks decides to go there. He is refused entry at first but when Jay-Winn (Jonathan Pointing) discovers that he is from another world he is let in and Jay-Winn dutifully listens to all his stories (such as winning Wimbledon… again). Eventually he is invited to an exclusive party that night.

Paul Kaye as Howell

The story runs parallel with resident wizard Howell (Paul Kaye, Dracula Untold) trying to make a deal for a shield stone – which makes the holder impervious to attack. Unfortunately the seller, Rina (Susan Wokoma) – a childhood friend of Brian’s friend Barbara (Sharon Rooney) – is a con artist and, as well as paralleling the stories and bringing them together at the conclusion, the writers draw a parallel between the bloodsuckers and the con artist draining monies. Howell proves the most entertaining component of the episode.

the desrati

As for the vampires, they are known as desrati, have a third eyelid as well as eyes that glow and when they drain a victim they absolutely desiccate them. Their aim is gather rare bloods to sample – hence Brian, Rina (as she claims to be royalty to them) and Brian’s bar buddy Steg (Kenneth Collard) – who is half dwarf and half giant. We see them with “tomato juice” but should the blood be infused with an intoxicant that can really knock it out of them.

a victim

The episode was fun though the vampire aspects were sparse – we do not see an attack for instance and, as I say, the aspects around Howell are the most entertaining. I’m scoring as a vampire episode and its ability to stand alone from the series. It certainly needed no previous knowledge to watch and enjoy but the vampire aspects deserve no more than 4 out of 10 – score bolstered by the episode as a whole and the episode as a whole deserving of a higher score.

The imdb page is here.