"You've heard it said that living well is the best revenge. Au contraire! Living forever is the best revenge." - Nigel Bennett as Lucian Lecroix, late-night DJ and vampire
Forever Knight, The Trilogy: Part Two DVD Review
By Robert Atkinson
Of course, not all vampires share this sentiment. Thanks to Anne Rice, blood-sucking creatures of the television night seem to spend more time on the psychiatrist's couch than in the crypt. And who can blame them? Crippling guilt, maudlin self-examination, hundreds of years of painful flashbacks.being a TV vampire is such a drag.
Before Buffy's sometimes beau-hunk Angel brooded his way into a short-lived spin-off series, the television face of vampire angst was Nicholas "Nick" Knight (Geraint Wyn Davies) in Forever Knight. An intriguing mix of the crime and horror genres, the series, based on 1989 TV movie starring Rick Springfield, ran during the 1992-1993 season on CBS, aired in re-run the following year, then went into first-run syndication before being picked up by the USA Network. Despite a rocky broadcast history during its three-year run, Forever Knight became a cult favorite with a legion of fans who will be looking for any shred of misstatement and mischaracterization in this review. Apologies in advance.
An immortal main character means an extremely lengthy back-story. As the show's opening narration dramatically informs, Nick was "brought across" to the vampire side in 1228. For years, he killed victims at will with his companions, his lover Janette (Deborah Duchene) and his malevolent vampire master Lacroix (Nigel Bennett), but now he wants to atone for his sins and find a way to become mortal and to end his "endless, forever night." What better place to find your humanity than working nights on the mean streets of Toronto as a homicide detective.
Most of his vampire skills transfer well to police work: super strength and speed, heightened senses, infrared vision, and a Jedi-like ability to hypnotize people. Nick can fly but doesn't turn into a bat. (Flying means blurrily disappearing from one place, a camera careening over Toronto at night, and reappearing somewhere else. Given the show's budgetary constraints, it's a wise aesthetic move.) He avoids the day shift by claiming to have a rare sunlight allergy/disease, leaving him free to work cases at night and cruise the streets in his Cadillac convertible-a car chosen for the trunk space in case of he's caught out in the sunlight. Long-term investments are one of the perks of immortality, so Nick lives in a massive, immaculately decorated loft-space with remote control blinds on the windows, a piano, a motorcycle, a sunbed, and a fridge full of chilled cow blood in wine bottles.
The second season of Forever Knight is being sold as Part Two of a trilogy, a natural marketing move given the genre. It opens with Nick and his partner Detective Don Schanke (John Kapelos) working in a new precinct with the no-nonsense Captain Amanda Cohen (Natsuko Ohama) and Medical Examiner Natalie Lambert (Catherine Disher), the only one who knows his secret. She is working on a "cure" for Nick and not so secretly pines for him.
Nick's desire to be mortal and concern for human life has strained his ties to other vampires. His former lover Janette runs Raven, a nightclub for Toronto's vampires and Cure fans, and sympathizes with him. Lacroix, who brought Nick across and is therefore his master, mocks Nick's quest to become human, often thwarting his efforts. The three make up a dysfunctional family bound by blood and centuries together.
The past isn't dead, and it isn't even past, especially if you're a vampire. Each episode flashes backs into a portion of Nick's life that ties directly or indirectly into the storyline. Whenever he gets a far away look in his eyes, you never know where it'll lead: a 1920s Paris nightclub ("Baby Baby"), a turn of the century Egyptian archeological dig ("Faithful Followers"), the 1960s Chicago police department ("Amateur Night"), or a faux Stonehenge in medieval Wales ("Queen of Harps"). One of the more ridiculous flashbacks, in the episode "Can't Run, Can't Hide", puts Nick in Vietnam as a Red Cross worker for a Mi Lai-styled massacre of civilians by US soldiers and spending the daylight hours in Vietcong tunnels.
The main theme of Forever Knight is exclusion versus belonging. The show's stitching together of Nick's past and the police cases works best when it avoids the obvious analogies. Being a vampire may provide special insight into the mind of a serial killer hunting humans, the trapped life of a prostitute, and the insatiable longing of a junkie, but it doesn't make for very interesting television. Some episodes tread familiar territory without any twists or surprises: Jack the Ripper ("Bad Blood"), mob family relations ("Father's Day"), and a St. Valentine's Day killer ("Be My Valentine"). Among the most forgettable is "Killer Instinct," which is unfortunately the first one of the set. The episode has Nick framed for murder by Lacroix and plot holes big enough to drive a dozen wooden stakes through.
Forever Knight is at its best when breaks from expected plotlines and pokes fun at itself. Standout episodes include "Faithful Followers," "Curiouser and Curiouser," and "The Fix." In "Faithful Followers," Nick goes undercover to solve a murder at a New Age cult. Natalie and Schanke believe he's been brainwashed, and even at the episode's end, it's unclear to what extent he had fallen under the cult leader's spell. In "Curiouser and Curiouser," guilt over the killing of a bystander during a robbery puts Nick in an alternate world where there are no vampires and he's married to Janette, having an affair with Natalie, and Lacroix is dead. But the best of the lot is "The Fix." Natalie discovers a temporary "cure" for Nick's vampirism, allowing him to go during the day and enjoy normal human behavior again, including gorging himself on every piece of food he finds.
Geraint Wyn Davies doesn't initially come off as a good choice for a vampire-maybe he's not striking enough, maybe it's the dishrag blond hair-but on the whole, he wears the fangs and glowing eyes well. As Janette and Lacroix, Deborah Duchene and Nigel Bennett are much before traditionally "vampire-like" in looks and demeanor. Bennett, a British stage actor transplanted to Canada, is especially enjoyable as Lacroix. His monologues as the late-night DJ "The Night Crawler" reach a level of genuine creepiness that the show would never otherwise achieve.
On the other end of the spectrum, John Kapelos' bumbling blue-collar detective Don Schanke provides the comic relief, some intentional, some not. His name is pronounced "skanky" and sometimes shortened to "skank", which means at least once per episode someone says, "Come on, Skank" or "Nice going, Skanky." Catherine Disher's Natalie mines the same straight-laced doctor vein as Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully on The X-Files, but adds a greater hint of underlying sensuality. Nick and Natalie's simmering almost romance generates fewer sparks than it should. The chemistry between the actors simply isn't there.
The twenty-six episodes of Forever Knight, The Trilogy: Part Two come on six disks housed in a single foldout digipak case with plenty of splashy blood red graphics and vampire faces with eyes. The case slides into a cardboard outer sleeve. A short episode guide with one sentence plot summaries (which aren't always accurate) and credit information tucks into case.
