Psychoville; One more reason to be afraid of clowns.
Remember the first time you saw Twin Peaks? Like me, you probably spent the entire glorious hour with your head tilted in rakish confusion, jaw slack and eye sporadically twitching with spasmodic delight.
At the end of it, you probably turned to your viewing companion and uttered that immortal phrase, “Wait… What?”
And then, “What did that have to do with midgets?”
So too is one’s reaction to the new BBC comedy-thriller series, Psychoville.
The show follows the lives of five ordinary people; a midwife with a dark secret, a blind, curmudgeonous millionaire with a dark secret, a serial-killer aficionado with a dark secret (and possibly an Oedipus complex,) a one-handed children’s clown with a secret that’s been painted over with rainbow colours but the paint’s worn through to reveal the darkness of the secret underneath, and a telekinetic midget. With a dark secret. Involving porn.
Someone has been sending letters to each person, simply stating, “I know what you did.” In the pilot this somewhat weak plotline takes a backseat to the over-the-top character development, and it remains to be seen whether anything will become of this watered down story arc or whether the show will expand on the nearly sketch-show feel it achieved in the pilot, but the bizzaro cast of characters are strong enough to stand up to either possibility.
Personally, I like to believe that these letters are less of a targeted threat and more of a social experiment. Grab your crayons and play along. Everyone has a dark secret just waiting for the opportunity to be brought into the light; I encourage all readers to leave similar letters where your loved ones can find them, then sit back and enjoy the mayhem.
The Psychoville pilot aired in the UK on June 18th, no news yet whether it’ll make its way across the pond, but I predict a show as strange as this will be part of Adult Swim’s lineup before the second season airs.
You can visit the YouTube pages for Mr. Jelly, David Sowerbutts, and Oscar Lomax, whom I am convinced is a terrifying glimpse into Joe’s inevitable future.