Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, Mark Poksch, Veronika Slowikowska, Jake McDorman, Anthony Atamanuik, Michael Mann, Craig Robinson, Nick Kroll, Mark Hamill, Greta Lee, Haley Joel Osment, Lucy Punch, Christine Ebadi.

It is the darkness that we arguably feel our senses become heightened, take on a form that borders somewhere between overwhelming animalistic hedonism and the morose anxiety that sees us confess our perceived sins to total strangers at four in the morning, the lockdown blues of the missed bus home, or the last temptation of the meat feast pizza in which to soak up the residue of Bloody Mary’s devoured; in darkness we are more our true selves than we care to believe, care to imagine, in the daylight, when the sun bleaches out our wickedness.

The return of Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, Colin Robinson, and Nandor’s faithful but slightly perplexing familiar, Guillermo for a second series of What We Do In The Shadows is a welcome one, not only for its irreverence to the two genres in which it inhabits, the mockumentary and the world of the blood sucking terror that is vampirism but because it is one of the sharpest situation comedies to have been placed on British television for quite some time.

The powder keg of insightful, almost reverential, deviation to both causes of humour is only to be expected when it is placed alongside its parent film brought to the cinema by the surreal minds of Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, a cult classic that spawns its own offspring is to be congratulated at the best of times but in a time devoid of that touch of black comedy/observational satire which is dipped into the same waters that graced series such as Shelley, Drop The Dead Donkey and Red Dwarf, then the subtilties of the script, the sense of human sexual behaviour transplanted into a world of vampiric ambiguity and forthright honesty, combine to make a series that arguably cannot but be enjoyed fully in anything but one sitting, a binge, a gorging of comedy blood in one luxurious bite.

The second series lives up to the faith showered upon it from every part of its development and is equal to both its debut series and the aforementioned film from which it takes its illustrious name. This is down to the combination of writing, of panache shown by its cast and guest stars, including in its second season the superb Mark Hamill, Lucy Punch and Haley Joel Osment, and the setting of Staten Island, which gives the entire series the sense of down at heel debauchery which makes each episode that beguiling loss of time appeal.

Compared to other mockumentaries, What We Do In The Shadows refuses to sink into the mire of the cringe that besets and bogs down others in its class, its main cast is terrific to watch and catches the mood of its subject with nerves of steel and satirical punch; a genuine pleasure to see such a great comedy return for another run.

Ian D. Hall