I spent significant chunks of the 1990s and the 2000s watching Joss Whedon shows, and there was never really a question that I was going to watch this one. Whedon has been cancelled for being a terrible person, and HBO has done its best to distance him from the latest series he created, "The Nevers." He hasn't appeared in any of the marketing, and will be replaced as showrunner for any subsequent seasons. However, "The Nevers" is so clearly a Whedon project, featuring so many familiar Whedonisms, it's impossible to ignore his contributions.
So, in an alternate universe version of Victorian London, a strange event causes many women and a few men to develop mysterious superpowers. Dubbed, "The Touched," they're treated as threats to the ruling elite, as a new resource to be exploited, or as unfortunates to be saved, depending on the person. Two of the Touched, Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) and Penance Adair (Ann Skelly), run the Orphanage, a home for the Touched that have nowhere else to go. They're supported by an invalid spinster, Mrs. Bidlow (Olivia Williams), and staunchly opposed by Lord Massen (Pip Torrens), who is convinced the Touched are dangerous. Other characters include the murderous madwoman Maladie (Amy Manson), a hedonist entrepreneur Hugo Swann (James Norton), Mrs. Bidlow's conflicted brother Augie (Tom Riley), a West Indian physician, Dr. Cousens (Zackary Momoh), and Inspector Frank Mundi (Ben Chaplin).
Among The Touched, there's Lucy (Elizabeth Berrington), Primrose (Anna Devlin), Harriet (Kira Sonia Sawar), Desirée (Ella Smith), Mary (Eleanor Tomlinson), and Myrtle (Viola Prettejohn) - and I won't reveal their specific powers, because discovering those is half the fun. And the show really is an awful lot of fun, in a big, splashy kind of way, even though I'm not sure whether it's actually good. It's every single Joss Whedon series (and a few of the movies) condensed into one big, messy Victorian "X-men" pastiche. The pace is quick, big new reveals and twists are coming constantly, and HBO provides a hefty budget to make it all look fabulous. In the third episode, there's a sensational fight scene between a man who can walk on water and one of our heroines that takes place both on and under the surface of a lake.
However, and it's a big however, "The Nevers" also features many of Joss Whedon's usual bad habits - there's a whole, terrible subplot involving a skeevy brothel, the dialogue is very stylized and often sounds ridiculous for this time period, and there's an awful lot of hastily skipping over the uncomfortable implications of certain situations. You can tell with the minority characters that he's trying to be better, but he's not trying hard enough. And if you're at all familiar with Joss Whedon's work, nearly every single character feels derivative of one from an earlier series. Amalia has Buffy the Vampire Slayer's power set and quips, plus the existential issues of Echo from "Dollhouse." Penance is essentially Kaylee from "Firefly" with an Irish accent. Maladie is another "fun" mentally ill person.
It makes me feel very guilty about enjoying the series as much as I do. However, there are many, many other very talented people involved in the show. The actors, especially Laura Donnelly and Olivia Williams, are strong, and mostly able to make the show feel less silly than it is. The production design and costuming work is gorgeous. The VFX crew is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. The amount of work involved in putting this show together was clearly monumental, and it's an awful shame that it's been compromised by Whedon's bad behavior.
"The Nevers" is at its best in little moments and specific scenes. And there are enough of them that I keep being convinced to ignore all the uncomfortable parts of the show and watch the next episode. There's clearly enough good pieces here for an entertaining, memorable series, and I sincerely hope that the show will be able to go on to be better without Whedon than it was with him.
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