Ordinarily, I'm not one to get worked up over TV fantasy/horror thrillers.
I mean, walls dripping blood, haints in the paint, vamps in the attic, ghoulies in the woods and whatever critters they conjure up on Grimm just don't make me grip the armrest when watching on the small screen.
The Strain, on the other hand, turned out to be something different. It'll make you go turn on more lights. Just in case.
The series returns with 10 episodes of Season 3 at 9 p.m. today on FX and is rated TV-MA for language, violence and really icky vampire tongues.
The Strain is what is labeled in the biz as a "high concept" series. That means the premise is foremost rather than character development: Jurassic Park rather than The Notebook. Of course, no matter how intriguing a high-concept project is, if it doesn't have characters we like, we won't like the series.
In The Strain, "a mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism erupts and our intrepid heroes wage war for the fate of humanity."
That's pretty high for a concept and comes from co-creators, executive producers and writers Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. More? Lost's executive producer and showrunner Carlton Cuse serves as both for The Strain.
The first season introduced us to Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Canary Team in New York. Goodweather and his team were called to town to investigate the outbreak.
As the strain spread, a gaggle of ordinary citizens joined Goodweather to battle the evil. They include Kevin Durand as Vasiliy Fet, a rat exterminator who knows the city's dark and deadly underground.
In the second season, New York has been abandoned by the federal government and is rapidly succumbing to the vampire epidemic. Our heroes seem to be on their own.
And we learn more about The Master, the ancient evil behind the virus. Our team tries and fails to take him down.
Goodweather and his closest ally, Dr. Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro), concentrate on creating a biological weapon to combat the infected humans -- vampires called strigoi.
How can you spot a strigoi? First, they go bald (see photo) and then they get really bad teeth. Most importantly, they develop a long, retractable proboscis beneath the tongue that can shoot out about six feet like a bloodsucking chameleon. This thing is both a feeding and reproductive organ.
Paramount to the cause is professor Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), a Holocaust survivor who has fought The Master ever since he encountered him in Nazi Germany. Setrakian is searching for an ancient book he hopes will reveal a way to defeat The Master and his strigoi before the virus has spread too far to be checked.
Last season found the group struggling with personal conflicts and paranoia as The Master got ever closer to executing his grand plan.
Can the city and humanity be saved? Can our heroes overcome all this evil? We'll find out in Season 4. Time to grip those armrests.
• Early birds. The new fall season doesn't officially begin until Sept. 19, but we can always count on a few shows jumping the gun. FX has three such programs and The Strain is just the first.
Others on the FX sidelines are Atlanta, a semi-autobiographical comedy/drama television series created by and starring Donald Glover set for 9 p.m. Sept 6, and a delightful, smart and sophisticated adult comedy, Better Things, at 9 p.m. More on these shows as they get closer.
• Caitlyn canceled. E! has axed Caitlyn Jenner's reality show I Am Cait after two seasons. The series, which chronicled Jenner's life as a transgender woman, had dropped to fewer than a million viewers each week when the plug was pulled.
Jenner posted on Twitter: "It's time for the next adventure. Thank you E! & thank you to the best girlfriends I could ask for!" Look for Jenner to still turn up on Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
• Brian Williams. It's been almost a year since former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was allowed back after being benched for seven months for playing fast and loose with the facts (he "conflated") in his reporting during the 2003 Iraq War. It caused a big stink.
NBC demoted Williams and shipped him over to sister channel MSNBC as anchor for breaking news.
MSNBC says that beginning sometime in September, Williams will anchor a daily 10 p.m. live newscast that will offer news and analysis during the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, Williams will still be the breaking news guy during the day.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 08/28/2016