I Watch TV: The Nevers
The Nevers
In late-Victorian London the Touched are emerging, people (often women) with extraordinary powers. Some people want to use them, some to supress them and of course the Touched themselves have their own opinions, including murder and vengeance as well as trying to do good.
It’s Victorian X-Men and none the worse for it.
Amalia True is in charge of an orphanage that takes in the Touched, and she has glimpses of the future and also she fights. Her great friend is Penance Adair who sees the flow of energy and makes machines. They’re funded by Lavinia Bidlow, a rich and posh wheelchair-using spinster. Opposing her and the Touched is Lord Gilbert Massen who heads up a secret cabal of the powerful who run Britain.
Meanwhile Maladie is a criminal Touched who is on a killing spree, and the semi-official leader of a Touched underground. On her tail is detective Frank Mundi, whose former-fiancé Mary turns out to have a song that only the Touched can hear, and so is of interest to everyone.
Hugo Swann runs a private club that has all kinds of hedonistic pleasures, and is expanding to include the Touched. His friend Augie Bidlow, Lavinia’s brother, gets caught up in this, as well as his sister’s charitable projects.
All this gets set in place in the first episode, and there are as many side characters sketched out as well, for use in later stories. There are several action sequences and expository scenes. The whole thing moves at a pace but feels unhurried even as the plot unwinds frantically.
It’s fun and when it deviates from the 1890s period it does so in the direction of the 21st Century, making things more familiar for the non-historical pedant viewer. There’s an in-universe reason as well.
If the last of the first block of six episodes explains too much in a slightly disappointing way then I suppose that’s at least as much on me for wanting fun Victorian X-Men as it is on the show for trying not to be too much X-Men.
Watch This: Fun, action, steampunk Victoriana, intrigue and
clever use of powers
Don’t Watch This: Too much superhero bollocks already
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