What We Do in the Shadows – Season 3 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

A most welcome return, and whilst most will know this, for the uninitiated What We Do in the Shadows began life as a New Zealand based feature film (itself based on an earlier short film) and was transplanted to Staten Island for its series run (see reviews for seasons One and Two).

Despite the geographic (and main character) changes it was still in the same universe and characters from the film have appeared in the series. The premise of a film crew covering the lives of a group of vampire housemates remained the same though the characters were original to the series.

Laszlo and Nadja

Three seasons in and the vampires are now beloved characters. There is Nandor (Kayvan Novak), along with his human familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and her husband Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry, Snow White and the Huntsman) – who is by far my favourite character, and energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch). As the season begins the vampires are holding Guillermo in a jail cell (in the basement) whilst they contemplate what to do with him.

Guillermo 'imprisoned'

In the finale of season 2 (having escaped death in season 1, after accidentally killing Baron Afanas (Doug Jones, Universal Dead, Hocus Pocus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron & Night Angel)) the vampires are drawn to an event, which turns out to be a pretext for their execution by order of the vampiric council. In the meantime, Guillermo had discovered that he was of the Van Helsing line and a born vampire hunter, so he rescued his master and friends – by killing every other vampire there.

In council robes

What the vampires fail to realise, as they slowly (over months) deliberate the familiar’s fate is that the cell can’t hold him and he is leaving by day and doing household chores that the vampires think just happen (as well as buying edible food in place of the raw chicken they've been giving him) . The (main) Vampiric Council get in touch to say that they have decided, due to their apparent ruthlessness, to make the housemates leaders of the Vampiric Council of the Eastern Seaboard of the New World. Laszlo isn’t interested (his reasons for being a vampire are NSFW, though they don't include being a bureaucrat) but Nadja and Nando have to come to terms with power sharing. The new dynamic worked well for the comedy – though for me Laszlo was side-lined to a degree and the show worked its way naturally to a finale that has changed the dynamics (and focus) completely.

the Sire

I need to mention episode 6, the Escape. The Eastern Seaboard Vampiric Council have responsibility for the Sire (Vaios Skretas). An ancient vampiric creature who is believed to be the source of vampirism in all vampires. After forgetting to feed him, he escapes. There is a general panic as it is believed that if you kill a vampire any progeny die – something Laszlo dismisses as he and Nadja didn’t die when Baron Afanas died – then a penny drops and they dig up his charred and half missing remains, which are very much still alive.

Kristen Schaal as the Guide

I don’t want to spoil any more but will mention we find out what happens when housekeeping hoovers up a vampire’s native earth. This was a good solid season that perhaps concentrated mostly on Nadja and Nandor. However, Colin Robinson and Laszlo did get some spotlight, at least. I need to mention Kristen Schaal (Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant) as “the Guide”, the vampire council liaison who was marvellous. The fourth season promises to be interesting given the way season 3 has left off but, obviously, this review is for the season just aired and it was, again, a joy. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.