Dark Shadows is absolutely mesmerizing, even in 2019

The Muse

The ABC Gothic soap opera that aired 1,225 episodes between 1966 and 1971 -- which The CW is rebooting as a sequel series -- is available for streaming on Amazon Prime, which has every episode except one. "There is," says Kelly Faircloth, "something absolutely mesmerizing about Dark Shadows. It is a cult classic for very, very good reasons. Why would I watch the feuding monsters on Succession when I could instead watch a zonked-out, be-spelled young woman wandering stricken through a graveyard in her nightgown, looking like I feel after reading any news about the media industry? When I could watch Jonathan Frid try to smile menacingly around his fake fangs? Also, the plot’s sheer incoherence makes it incredibly rewarding when a character says something that actually suggests some common sense, like, 'Vicky, you were hired as a governess, not a psychoanalyst.'"