I Watch TV: Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing

Dr Abby Arcane works for the CDC and when a mysterious “green flu” strikes her hometown of Marais in the swamps of Louisiana she has to confront her past. Of course this is based on a superhero comic book, albeit a weird body-horror one, so there are mutagens being dumped in the swamp and people trying to keep secrets. A scientist, Alec Holland, is killed in the swamp and becomes the titular Swamp Thing.

There’s a guy called the Phantom Stranger who has been arranging things and Madame Xanadu, a blind fortuneteller who may be casting spells to raise the dead. The Swamp Thing is feeling a mystical plant space, the Green, and there are memories and dead patches in it. And of course there is the corruption of small town business that led to the mutagens being dumped into the swamp.

The story(s) can’t quite coalesce and although there are a handful of interesting characters and decent actors frankly the whole thing is trying too hard to have meaning and portent. It occasionally succeeds with plant- and body-horror though the big reveal is one I am already familiar with thanks to some Swamp Thing comics.

Watch This: For an occasionally scary superhero swamp show
Don’t Watch This: If people taking advantage of a disease for their own profit and a show that ended as soon as it had finally got its own premise laid out is not for you