SERIES PREMIERE: Early on in the TV series
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy slept with the vampire-with-a-soul Angel, only to have him revert immediately to a monstrous post-coital brute – perhaps the ultimate metaphor for the sexual dynamic feared by a young woman surrendering her virginity to a loved one. In
The Innocents, there’s a more fairy-tale supernatural dynamic at work: a young girl, upon reaching her 16
th birthday, suddenly discovers she has unknown, powerful abilities that she must strive to understand and control. The girl is named June, and is played by Sorcha Groundsell – at least most of the time. The rest of the time, she’s played by other people, because June is a shape-shifter, who discovers she has the gift, or the curse, of absorbing the outward appearances of others merely by touching them. This is a familiar trope from
The X-Men, and, on TV, currently is dramatized superbly as a subplot on FX’s
Legion. On
The Innocents, it all plays more like a Young Adult novel: June is in love with young Harry (Percelle Ascott), and the two of them run away together, but from whom, and to where? Based on this just-dropped Season 1,
The Innocents doesn’t have its characters acting logically much of the time, but as fantasy genre shows go, it’s at least a bit better than most recent CW attempts.
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.