This first season from 2016, retroactively titled The Executioner, is the story of Sarah, who moves back to the house she was born in with her husband. Sounds like a lovely fresh start, apart from the fact that Sarah was “born” on Halloween, when the man who had just killed her parents cut her from her mother’s womb. Her return coincides with a series of copycat murders, claimed by “The Executioner”, and seemingly centred around the seven deadly sins. Can Sarah figure out the killer before she’s killed herself? Perhaps the only way she can figure it out is to talk to the murderer of her parents.
As much as I got annoyed with the blatant rip off of American Horror Story and Halloween, I was hooked. The acting was terrible, the dialogue appalling and yet, I could not not watch the entire season in one sitting. The gore was wonderful, I didn’t figure out whodunnit until quite close to the end, and there were numerous twists that even if I saw them coming, were still great. The costume was neat, the flashbacks were enough to give a good background to poor Sarah’s life, but they’re also used to give context to the killings in the later episodes. The killings around the seven sins were inventive enough that I wanted to see what the next one would be. There were some improbabilities, like the sexual tension between her husband, Dylan, and his boss at the newspaper, or how Sarah’s gallery was making any sort of money when no-one went in there apart from to talk to her.
Sarah is portrayed by Katie McGrath, who unfortunately has the one character she plays in all her roles. The chemistry between her and her on-screen husband was non-existent. They were all pretty, and stupid, except the bad guy, who was just gloriously bad. But seriously, even with the faults, there’s only 8 episodes, so you can zip through it and just pretend the dialogue isn’t so creaky it needs oiling.
I so enjoyed this show, that I got unreasonably excited when I saw season 2 was up last year (which I also binged). Available on Netflix.