Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore, Max Thieriot, Olivia Cooke, Nestor Carbonell, Nicola Peltz, Ian Hart, Kennan Tracey, Ian Tracey, Aliyah O’Brien, Mike Vogel, Jenna Romanin, Brittney Wilson, Jere Burns, Emmalyn Estrada, Matthew Matdzij.

How do you top a film that routinely makes the top 100 lists of all time, how do you bring one of cinema’s scariest villains into the conscious of the television viewer without taking apart what made him such a compelling antagonist in the first place; the only way such a character as Norman Bates can return to the mind of the audience is to take him back to the very beginning, to the point where nature and nurture explore the madness within his teenage soul.

Psycho is not for everyone, but its imprint on pop culture society cannot be dismissed or ignored, it made Anthony Perkins a star, it brought even greater fame and notoriety to Alfred Hitchcock’s door, and added extra weight to the genre of Noir cinema, and as the first season of Bates Motel studies the relationship between Norman and his mother, and those who become immersed into the deadly association that has formed, the sense of the psychological conflict becomes enormous, that the subject of nature vs nurture is perhaps best explained in the unnatural bond that is moulded by manipulation and co-dependency of feelings.

In Freddie Highmore, there is arguably nobody finer who could have taken on the colossal role made famous by Mr. Perkins, his mannerisms are complete, the sense of exposed fear wishing to be let loose is overwhelming, the dangerous stares and eyes send shovers down the spine, and in a way it is so well crafted as to hold the illusion of beauty, the very essence of what made the original an absolute work of genius, and one that captures the spirit and insight into the often perceived split personality that dominates American society in general.

With a knock-out performance in the first series from the exceptional Vera Farmiga as Norma Louise Bates, Olivia Cooke as Emma Decody and Jere Burns as the mysterious and deadly Jake Abernathy, Bates Motel arrived on the scene in such a way that it is hard to ignore if you are student of the human condition and a devotee of the sinister expression pushed by American cinema.

All murderers start somewhere, they don’t just come out of the woodwork fully formed, like an animal that has been exposed to taxidermy, the essence of their formation has been released even before the fur is removed of blood.

Ian D. Hall