The Following. And a satsuma.

Looking out at grim reality – economic meltdown, global terrorism, breakfast TV – its easy to see why so many people want to blot it all out with the likes booze, drugs and the incessant cheerfulness of Take Me Out.  I don’t need those extreme measures; I’ve got Season 2 of The Following, a show so delightfully insane it functions in a completely different universe.  On the face of it, the reality of The Following is not a happy one – after all, it revolves around the murderous cult and its leader, a ‘charismatic’ English professor who quite likes Edgar Allen Poe. 

To think that this is a depressing place is to miss the point however.  Sure, there’s a lot of shrieking and murderising, but I always come away from an episode with a smile on my face.  For a start, the main antagonist is played by James Purefoy, so hammy he’ll be featuring in the next episode of Kill It, Cook It, Eat It.  It’s not really his fault – he’s fighting against dialogue written by Kevin ‘Scream’ Williamson, who just doesn’t know how to give Purefoy any charisma or menace.  Purefoy’s solution is to lay it on thick, with the result that we’re treated to Williamson’s script being read like it’s a Jacobean tragedy, which is a bit like watching Daniel Day Lewis in an episode of Hollyoaks.  And who wouldn’t want to see that?

Season 2 has carried on much where Season 1 left off.  Opposing Captain Ham is Kevin Bacon, playing an FBI man so earnest I started to think he might actually be called Ernest.  He runs around a lot, getting to places just in time to cradle colleagues who’ve been stabbed.  And by golly there’s a lot of stabbing!  Kevin Williamson really does like knives!  In fact there’s been so much stabby action I’ve become a little bit blasé about the whole thing, and only got a bit interested when it looked like Purefoy was going to hit a vicar with a garden gnome.  No, really.  As it happened, he didn’t.  He stabbed him.

Episode 2 had my favourite moment of the series so far though, coming when Ernest discovered that there was such a thing as identical twins.  My wife thinks that his Carry-On style double-take was because he found out that the twins were both serial killers, and this would be unusual, but she’s forgetting that all this takes place in an alternate hyper-reality where James Purefoy can dress up as someone from Duck Dynasty and no one recognises him for a year.  In this world, the mad, mad world of Mr Williamson, its completely natural that twins would be creepy obsessive serial killers, albeit with different haircuts which is handy for telling them apart.  No, I’m fairly sure that Ernest had never, never ever seen twins before.  Perhaps in Following World they’re like unicorns and leprechauns?  If I’m right, and I hope I am, we’ve a whole season of comedy-style reactions to everyday objects.  Next week, Ernest will be startled by a satsuma.  Episode 5 will see him swoon when he sees a picture of a kangaroo.  Which is usually my reaction to Take Me Out.