Homepage > Joss Whedon Off Topic > In ’Hex,’ Clashing Boarding School Cliques With Witches Versus (...)
« Previous : Unreal game designer chooses end of Buffy Season 2 as most memorable TV moment
     Next : Charisma Carpenter - "Cheater’s Club" Tv Movie - High Quality Stills Photos »

Nytimes.com

In ’Hex,’ Clashing Boarding School Cliques With Witches Versus Ghouls (buffy mentions)

Virginia Hefferman

Thursday 15 June 2006, by Webmaster

If you never liked "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," though you tried to like it but the dialogue seemed uptight, and the glimpses of the sinister past so Halloweeny, and you never fully understood the connection between adolescent alienation and the supernatural because as a teenager you liked realistic stuff that told you how to get by, then you may have a chance to redeem yourself with "Hex."

"Hex" was billed as the British "Buffy" in 2004 when it started on Sky One in Britain. "Buffy" is big there, but "Hex" didn’t pass muster with fans of the American show. With its languorous tempo and haphazard mythology, it struck many "Buffy" fans as desultory or, worse, boring, with nothing like the coherence or fire-eyed ardor of "Buffy," Joss Whedon’s enshrined series. "Hex" was canceled after two seasons.

But now it’s here, Thursdays on BBC America, and it’s worth a look. First, it’s beautiful: sweeping, with a hazy, dewy finish ideally suited to its shire setting at a magisterial boarding school called Medenham Hall. The school’s estate lacks the often cramped, back-lot look of "Buffy," and the evocation of a real climate with unpredictable gusts and lonesome heaths is scarier, to this viewer, than cramped libraries and picturesque churchyards. For one, you can’t run away from the big Brontė-like moors, or at least it takes a long time.

At Medenham are the bad people - the popular girls, naturally - who are coarse and snobbish, and the good people - the misfits, naturally - who are emotionally refined, funny, yearning, romantic and sad. The good people are chiefly two: Thelma (Jemima Rooper), a lesbian who looks like a square-jawed Kelly Osbourne, and her roommate, the witchy one, Cassie (Christina Cole), who is distractingly gorgeous, with the coloring of a Swede and the profile of Kate Bosworth. Suffice it to say that no woman who ever looked like this, in the history of women, has ever been a misfit.

There is something weird about Cassie’s beauty, however: her hair is too uniformly yellow and ultimately does not belong on a purportedly modest English girl, and her face seems artificially stilled, as if by Botox, or, more precisely, Restylane, which is used to fill in wrinkles and acne scars.

As Manohla Dargis observed in The New York Times, the damage that cosmetic medicine has done to acting has yet to be fully assessed. To have an actress who is supposed to be a teenage witch look partially palsied or numb with no explanation is just not fair to viewers. And viewers, especially the ones being asked to pay keen attention to a show about the uncanny with plenty of close-ups, should not be expected - out of decorum? - to keep a pact of silence about a central visual feature of their experience.

But let’s allow that Cassie’s slightly off-kilter beauty contributes to the sense that something is amiss at Medenham. Indeed, it’s haunted. That much is immediately clear, though it takes this pleasantly somnolent show a long time to disclose.

Unmysterious and mysterious things keep catching Cassie’s eye, including a sexy jerk named Troy (Joseph Morgan) and a sexy ghoul named Azazeal (Michael Fassbender). Azazeal is apparently a fallen angel - the history of the school includes a witch-trial scandal - and he’s stalking Cassie, who seems to have been chosen by the old witch ghosts. Or maybe she is an old witch ghost. In any case, previews suggest that she is about to have "Rosemary’s Baby" troubles and be forced to bear a devil-child of some kind.

In the meantime she and Thelma flaunt their rapport, and some of the best parts of the show for American viewers might be simply their dippy, peppy Anglicisms, as well as how harsh the girls can be with each other, in the English way. Friends call one another cow, and sincerely say "blimey"; stockings get laddered; they all have a laugh with their mates.

There’s something of the pitiless Etonian stoicism that pervades even this girl-dominated series that works well with magic. No one gets especially psychological, or, rather, psychological explanations seem flighty and are still subordinated to reason and sarcasm. People in the "Hex" world are left to deal with ghosts alone, which is how ghosts should be dealt with.

Last week Thelma died. The vibrant and cerebral character had pined for Cassie, who is apparently not gay, in a way that seemed far beneath her, and her death looked like lovelorn suicide. But we knew that it was Azazeal who killed her and killed any chance for a fully human lesbian character on the show, someone other than a woman who comes around just for a kiss during sweeps week.

Thelma, however, does stick around, but as an undead figure, showing up at her funeral to cheer Cassie on and leaven the scene with some snickery insight. Good for the gays or not? I have trouble calculating these things. British viewers have been ambivalent on this subject, as on most features of this beautiful, intelligent, imperfect show.

Hex

BBC America, tonight at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Directed by Brian Grant; Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy, producers; written by Julian Jones. A production of Shine Limited and Sony Pictures Television International

WITH: Christina Cole (Cassie Hughes), Jemima Rooper (Thelma Bates), Michael Fassbender (Azazeal), Colin Salmon (David Tyrel), Anna Wilson-Jones (Jo Watkins), Amber Sainsbury (Roxanne), Zoe Tapper (Gemma), Joseph Morgan (Troy), Jamie Davis (Leon).


2 Forum messages

  • Hex was an odd program to get into, as a Buffy fan I didn’t take to it straight away as the first couple of episodes were pure ’set up’ and quite slow, until I realised that they were in the great British tradition of drama series, ie. a slow burner. However after watching the re-runs on Sky, I started to see the merits of the show. It was brilliantly written and the characterisations were superb, especially Cassie with her Brit street smart " I am Gay so deal with it" in your face attitude. Micheal Fassbender as Azazeal gives the role of villain a typical British understated air that combines the attributes of the great seducer and ’the Beast’ with style and aplomb. Although Cassie is now dead, Do NOT write her off as just a sideline character or as a gay role model, for it has been reported that she has been a positive influence on young lesbians in this country, and in the second series it is revealed that you do do have to stop being gay just because you are dead, although with your American censorship rules I think that the scene of her making love with another dead lesbian in the crowded cafeteria will be heavily censored ( remember they are dead, no one else can see them). In all I would rate Hex as a good show with a lot of great moments.

    Now for the bad news Sky have decided to axe the show after the second series, leaving it with an unresolved cliffhanger, so to all Ameriacn fans I would say, "Grab your pens or keyboards and assault Mr Murdochs company with mail demanding that the story be ended properly with either a new series or at least a couple tv movies.. but if they will not comply then at least go out and buy the box sets and show that there is a following that needs to be placated.

    See online : Hex

  • After the pilot, Hex quickens the pace, and teases us with likeable characters, even tho they are the spawn of hell, or attempting to spawn something from hell.

    Unlike Buffy, there aren’t vampires, or even monsters of the week, but one arc, that in the second season, spirals out-of-control, leaving the show still likeable but more like a spin off. The second season left me wanting and disappointed overall.

    Difinately worth watching, it becomes a different show second season, taking some unusual risks that (by the cancallation) for me don’t pay off.

    Taunted as the British Buffy, once you get into the show, there are few similarities, and the show, at least in the first season, stands on its own merit.

    The storylines unravel, like a slow thread in your new favorite sweater, much like some classic movies such as Rebecca.

    Even though fewer in nature, the special effects are rather cool, and if you have an attention span longer than two minutes, you should find this a pleasant summer fare.

    See online : All Hexes aren’t bad!