Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: entertainment, film, neil gibson, tv, twisted dark

Twisted Dark TV Series Proposed By Neil Gibson

By Olly MacNamee

Bumping into Twisted Dark's Neil Gibson at the last MCM Comic Con, as you do, and grabbing him for the few minutes when he wasn't inundated by old and new fans alike, I was pleasantly surprised with the early Christmas present he offered me. A sneak peak at a sizzle reel just produced to promote a proposed TV series of his indie hit anthology series, now up to volume 6.

And what a professional looking piece of televisual entertainment it was. Running at ten minutes long, and based on a tale from Neil's most recent volume, So Easy, the plot is a simple but effective one; two people in a room, one a over familiar, dare I say obsessive, patient, the other his psychiatrist.

It is a tense, short, clever piece and because I won't want to spoil it for you, I can at least comment on it's merits as a piece of television and why I hope, from what I saw, there will be someone out there in TV land (a country that is growing and growing as more companies offer streaming services to rival the old terrestrial and satellite model) willing to commission Twisted Dark as a series.

In his session with the good doctor, Candice Toplaghatsian (played by Elizabeth Conboy), Mr Gregson (Dan Shelton) cannot help but reveal his deepest, darjest fantasies, which involve him killing or violently maiming the innocent people he comes across each and every day. But, these fantasies, as sick as they are, are not the true horror that is revealed at the end of this vignette of violence. A horror that is both simplistic in its execution but equally worrying too.  The real horror in many of the Twisted Dark stories I've read often lies not in the menacing and the macabre but in the twist, which often reveals the darkness in men's hearts and loopholes ripe for exploitation in our modern society. Let's put it this way, Mr Gregson gives new meaning to the term, 'hack and slash'.

The single setting – the doctor's office – the use of mid-shots and close-ups, all go to creating a psychologically tense, claustrophobic mise-en-scene that builds successfully under the directorship of James Childs, with a mooted palate and closed blinds, so we never get a glimpse of the outside world.

The use of original artwork from the series, used to illustrate the sick fantasies of Mr Gregson mind remind the viewer of the stories origins in print but also merges well when used in such a way. His mind is one of imagination and unreality, after all, detached from reality.

And, while celluloid preference for comic book content doesn't often stay from the super heroic and the big budgets demanded for such endeavors, the small screen and a smaller budget is the ideal place for the kind of psychological horror that Gibson does so well. America gave us the wonderful tapestry that is American Horror Story. Gibson could return the favour, if successful, and offer them our very own British Horror Story in return.

Olly MacNamee teaches English and Media, for his sins, in a school somewhere in Birmingham. Some days, even he doesn't know where it is. Follow him on twitter @ollymacnamee or read about his exploits at olly.macnamee@blogspot.co.uk. Or don't. You can also read his articles fairly frequently at www.bleedingcool.com too

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