Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore, Max Thierot, Olivia Cooke, Nestor Carbonell, Damon Gupton, Ryan Hurst, Jaime Ray Newman, Andrew Howard, Terence Kelly, Marshall Allman, Kelly-Ruth Mercier, Aliyah O’Brien, Karina Logue, Fiona Vroom, Craig Erikson, Anika Noni Rose, Louis Ferreira, David Cubitt, Luke Roessler, Kevin Rahm, Keenan Tracey, Alexia Fast, Alessandro Juliani, Lindsey Ginter, Kenny Johnson, Gina Chiarelli, Carmen Moore, Jay Brazeau, Molly Price.
We know the story of Norman Bates even if we have never seen the classic Hitchcock film, Psycho; for such is the power and fear of the name that it transcends cinema, and like others whose cinematic title occupies the label of artistic and imaginative killer, the viewer needs not to have seen the person in action to understand that what they are faced with is the severity of the human condition when it has cracked and split apart, revealing the bogeyman of moving pictures and the silver screen.
Norman Bates though has two lives, one for cinema, and one for television, and whilst Hitchcock’s 1960’ black and white classic is one of the finest creations of its kind, the reveal undoubtedly up there with the final moments of Planet of the Apes, it is to the television adaption that the tale really hits home and leaves the viewer concerned beyond reason, but also compelled to witness the slow and terrible mental decline of the protagonist, and the danger he represents the town of White Pine Bay.
Cinema may have brought Robert Bloch’s troubled and psychotic man to life, but it is without doubt that television has given him substance, and across the ten episodes that make up series four of the disturbing fiction, that sense of life is oozing wonderfully out of control, and just as the viewer thinks there may be a straight road ahead for the characters, a blind curve comes along which leaves them in shock, in combined voyeuristic dismay and elation.
As with the previous three series of Bates Motel, the performances of Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore as Mother and her psychotically unbalanced son, Norman, are first rate, as close to television gold as a viewer can ask for, and as the series touches upon the brief happiness in Vera’s life with her finding a semblance of love that doesn’t involve her son Norman, so the viewer knows that the car crash of her existence is to come to its unnatural conclusion.
The weaving of the back story to Norman’s life before the fatal introduction of thief Marion Crane in the original film, is outstanding, and with Nestor Carbonell in fine form as Sheriff Alex Romero, and Ryan Hurst adding a sense of local backwater anxiety to the arc, Bates Motel continues to hold the attention of the viewer to its absolute maxim; and one that rightly holds the mantle of excellent and thought-provoking television.
Ian D. Hall