Directors: John Lee Hancock, Louise Hooper & Eva Sørhaug
First aired: 2025
Contains spoilers
I’ve already looked at Interview With the Vampire (Season 1 & Season 2), which opened AMC’s The Immortal Universe. In truth I have yet to watch through the Mayfair Witches but have taken the opportunity, with the UK Blu-Ray release, to catch up with the Talamasca series. This series is based on the series of novels entitled “The Vampire Chronicles” and “The Lives of the Mayfair Witches”, rather than being versions of those novels.
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| Elizabeth McGovern as Helen |
It follows Guy Anatole (Nicholas Denton) newly qualified from law school and a telepath, who manages to snag a job at a top law firm when he is approached by Helen (Elizabeth McGovern), a Talamasca agent. The lure of money to hear her out (he’s financially embarrassed) is her hook and he discovers that they have been watching over his life (presumably, at first, due to his gift but later we discover that his missing mother was a Talamasca agent who went rogue).
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| Nicholas Denton as Guy |
He, of course, doesn’t believe her when she mentions the immortal world but she then introduces him to Burton (Jason Schwartzman), a vampire. He also goes to a book signing by Daniel Malloy (Eric Bogosian, Blade Trinity), who interviewed Louis in the Interview series. The fact that his book has been published puts this after the Interview seasons thus released but (if the various series will go this far) before the events in the book Queen of the Damned as there are plenty of younger end vampires around.
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| William Fichtner as Jasper |
Guy accepts his role as spy and gets one week’s condensed training – and this is where this series is that little weaker than those (I’ve seen thus far) based on Rice’s storylines. Ok, Helen is desperate for an off-books agent, but Guy is so green he should be dead (probably by the end of the first episode, certainly not far into the series). He is told to watch the London Talamasca motherhouse, and it becomes apparent that it has been taken over by a vampire named Jasper (William Fichtner) who is searching for an artefact called the 752 – a receptacle of all the Talamasca’s library that backed up their central library prior to a catastrophic fire in the 70s. Jasper has created revenants – the feral vampires seen in the Romanian sequence of Interview, but Jasper has worked out how to make them obedient.
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| a revenant |
Time to mention a vampire gift, from memory not in the books, though used within the Interview TV series, but which stood out to me here. Some vampires apparently have a time stopping gift. One might argue that it shows them observing time relatively, when fast moving, but Jasper stops time (including a pour of whisky hanging in the air) but converses with Guy and so it appears that time has stopped but he can choose who is affected. How this works is unknown and feels overpowered – when, with Louis and Lestat, it added to the atmosphere.
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| iron mask |
Another thing introduced is iron to control a vampire (which, of course, is a fae trait). This is in Rice’s books (introduced in Blood Canticle) but it subdues the mind and fire gifts, it does not rob them of other powers as it seems to in this. I will mention a little irk that many will not catch – unless they use UK rail – in the final episode they go to Waterloo Station, which was clearly not Waterloo (the series was filmed in Manchester and it looked suspiciously like Manchester Piccadilly station) and get on a Northern Train, which don’t run from Waterloo – not major, as most viewers won’t realise, but it knocked my immersion for a moment. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it was difficult to buy Guy, as he was way too green, the story was interesting, with plenty of twists and turns, and all the acting solid. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK
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