I Watch TV: Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country

Despite what the continuity announcer and various promotional materials suggest Lovecraft Country is not cosmic horror, nor is it particularly Lovecraftian in the sense that we usually understand the phrase. Which is not to say that Lovecraft’s more pulpy stories are not a big influence here. What the TV show is, is a dark fantasy adventure that slides on the scale from Indiana Jones to Horror, and delves into a slightly different sub-genre very week. And because our protagonists are black people in 1950s America, the true villains are racism and white supremacy, both specific and structural.

Atticus (Tic) Freeman comes home to Chicago thanks to a mysterious letter from his father, to find him missing. He enlists his uncle George, owner of a garage and publisher of a safe negro travel guide, to go and find him. His old friend Letitia (Leti), a photographer comes along. They get caught up in strange magical events, and discover that they are related to a secret society/family of very blond, white magicians.

This is all interesting enough, but it then picks up in the fifth episode (of ten) in which Ruby, Leti’s sister, transforms into a white woman and learns that the point of magic is to do whatever the fuck you want (this from Christina, the last surviving member of the Order of the Ancient Dawn, or rather not as women weren’t allowed). This then is followed up with Tic’s experiences in the army in Korea (he meets a monster whose actions may be less terrible than his in the war), and the next episode features Hippolyta, Tic’s aunt, travelling through time and space and having weird adventures.

The next two pile on the pressure (Dee, George and Hippolyta’s daughter, is cursed by the police and everyone has to make terrible bargains and go back in time to the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 to save her). Then we have the last episode and... it’s fine. Sacrifice, bad guys lose, fighting, excitement, robot hand, it’s all fine. But not as good as the middle section of the season!

The show makes no bones about its opinion on racial relations. At the start Tic is reading some Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the hero is a former confederate officer and he defends this choice, as the story is good enough not to worry about that, and anyway, white people write everything, what are you going to do? The show itself keeps coming back to The Count of Monte Cristo both explicitly and in the plot, making the fairly unsubtle point that, sure, but there are black authors too.

Watch This: Some truly brilliant episodes intermixed with fun and exciting fantasy TV
Don’t Watch This: If you prefer your true villainy to be a bit less explicitly mapped onto real world events.