The What We Do In The Shadows Spin-off Fans Must Stream
The New Zealand horror-comedy mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows has reshaped the comedy landscape. The film helped kickstart Taika Waititi’s career, perpetuated the horror-comedy trend of the 2010s, and spawned a pair of TV shows. While the American TV adaptation of the movie has become a hit, I rarely hear people talking about the New Zealand spin-off Wellington Paranormal, and that needs to change.
The Mundane Meets The Fantastical
Unlike both versions of What We Do in the Shadows, Wellington Paranormal follows human characters dealing with the paranormal. The spin-off focuses on the police officers who appeared in the original movie, failing to recognize the vampires for what they are and being comically ill-equipped to deal with supernatural creatures. It swaps the paradigm of What We Do in the Shadows, having normal people living in the fantastical rather than vampires living in the mundane.
Returning Cast From The Movie
Wellington Paranormal has a great comedic cast, starting with its co-leads Karen O’Leary and Mike Minogue, who return as officers Leary O’Leary and Kyle Minogue. They are joined by Maaka Pohatu as the conspiracy theorist Sergeant Maaka and Tom Salisbury as the downtrodden officer Parker. Other What We Do in the Shadows actors appear as guest actors, including Cori Gonzalez-Macuer and Rhys Darby, reprising their roles from the film, and Jemaine Clement appears as the voice of a killer robot.
A Comedy Police Procedural
The mockumentary style of What We Do in the Shadows is kept, which, combined with the show’s police procedural framework, turns Wellington Paranormal into a parody of Cops. Most episodes feature O’Leary and Minogue patrolling until they stumble across a problem, which always turns out to be supernatural. Like Cops, the camera crew is often forced to join in on foot chases, and the officers frequently explain what’s happening to the camera.
Perfect For Fans Of Deadpan Humor
It’s the mundane police tactics and unphased nature of Minogue and O’Leary that make Wellington Paranormal a comedic masterpiece. When a zombie outbreak threatens to cause an apocalypse, they don’t slip into that genre, they simply start arresting the zombies. Every problem, no matter how extreme or horrific, is treated like a routine legal infraction, a bit that never stops being funny.
Formulaic But That’s Not A Bad Thing
Wellington Paranormal is undeniably a sitcom, it borrows heavily from monster-of-the-week dramas like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episodes almost all follow the same formula, Minogue and O’Leary investigate a crime, Sergent Makka reveals its supernatural origin to them, and then they solve the case. While there are occasional twists on the formula or nods to continuity, the show’s main interest is exploring how the hapless protagonists react to a different supernatural phenomenon in each episode.
The formulaic, repetitive nature of Wellington Paranormal may rub some people wrong, but it’s one of my favorite sitcoms of the last few years. The small cast is phenomenal, with the characters consistently loveable, even as they fumble from problem to problem. With only four six-episode seasons and a Christmas Special, the show ended before it overstayed its welcome, with few forgettable episodes.
Stremaing Now On Max
REVIEW SCORE
I would recommend Wellington Paranormal to just about anyone, but What We Do in the Shadows fans, in particular, need to watch the show. The show combines the movie’s sense of humor with new genres, making it feel fresh and familiar at the same time. Fans of horror-comedy should stream Wellington Paranormal on Max now.
