Cult series status is sometimes used lightly. Any production has five fans who defend it tooth and nail as if it were an artistic Holy Grail, even the most mediocre ones. But What We Do in the Shadows must be able to claim itself as such: a mockumentary about New York vampires that, while trying to make the viewer laugh, has fun with the horror genre, the mythology around the descendants of Count Dracula and even introduces elements of gore. And, unfortunately for lovers of good fiction, it turns out they won't be immortal.
As reported by the Deadline portal, the FX channel intends to dismiss What We Do in the Shadows after the broadcast of the sixth season. The fifth, broadcast between July and August, was worn out in terms of viewership on traditional television in the United States: it averaged only 275,000 viewers, dropping 22% compared to the previous season. Although the audience that accumulates on Hulu, the platform that broadcasts the episodes on demand (and that does not provide viewing figures), should be taken into account, it seems that the decision derives from this decrease in viewer interest. In Spain it is broadcast through HBO Max.
The series created by Jermaine Clement, the New Zealand screenwriter, focuses on the vampires who live in a house on Staten Island: Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who have Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) as their main servant, obsessed with satisfying them to one day receive the bite that will also make him immortal. It is derived from the film with the same name that Clement made with Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit).
The key to What We Do in the Shadows is the original use of the mockumentary format popularized by series like The Office with impeccable scripts that turned the mythology of the supernatural into sketch meat. And, with extreme characters like the depressive and deluded Nandor or the very annoying Colin Robinson (who, instead of sucking blood, feeds on boring others and spoiling the party wherever he goes), he dismantled a figure as romanticized as vampires. .
With the five seasons broadcast to date, for example, Clement has managed to sneak into the category of best comedy series in 2020 and 2022, an unexpected achievement as it is a genre comedy, in addition to earning the favor of critics. The sixth season, which was already confirmed before the production of the fifth, still does not have a premiere date although it is expected in 2024.
