What happens when you die? I don't know - and I don't trust anyone that tells me they do.

Continuing my trip down Empire's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021

#5 : Midnight Mass

If The Haunting Of Hill House didn't make it clear enough, Mike Flanagan getting stuck into an entire Netflix limited series means you're in for something special. And his long-gestating Midnight Mass (of which he directed every instalment, and co-wrote them all too) was pure, unfiltered Flanagan – a bloody-but-beautiful, spine-tinglingly spiritual seven-episode series that plays both as a rip-roaring horror story and as theological allegory. With its explorations of familial trauma, faith, guilt, alcoholism, and the ghosts of the past that refuse to die, Flanagan mulls over his key obsessions afresh – spinning them into a Stephen King-esque tale of an isolated island community, and the charismatic young preacher (an astonishing Hamish Linklater) who inspires renewed religious fervour in his flock when performing apparent miracles before their very eyes. To state the exact subgenre Midnight Mass plays with would be to spoil things, but Flanagan weaves his central themes together with thrilling potency – the compulsion to drink, redemption through communion, and the very notion of bad faith. It's lofty material, but not afraid to splash around the red stuff too – with dead cats everywhere, a glowing-eyed beast stalking the island, and several narrative rug-pulls to make your jaw drop. Yes, there are a lot of monologues. But those back-to-back ones about what happens when you die might change your life.

Skipping over The Underground Railroad (#9 here, #13 on The Guardian's list), Feel Good (#8/#6), Squid Game (#7/#5) and The White Lotus (#6/#2) brings us to this which I would have absolutely avoided in '21 because I'm not really in to horror. However, Mike Flanagan later went on to do The Fall Of The House Of Usher which I found surprisingly enjoyable, so I find myself quite looking forward to this.

Well - that wasn't quite what I was expecting? It certainly has elements of horror/fantasy to it but it's actually more a theological rumination on human beliefs, strengths, weaknesses and failures - it's heavy, man! But not unreasonably so - it's presented within a very relatable small town framework with several recognisable characters and horror tropes. Some might say the characters and tropes are clichéd, but they're fully formed and well used so I think they get away with it within the framework of the story - it feels at times that what it's saying is more important than how it's saying it.  

But that's not to say it doesn't tell its tale in an entertaining fashion - I very much enjoyed it and watched it all pretty rapidly because I was intrigued as to where it was going to go. Yes, it gets batshit crazy towards the end (and leans more heavily in to the horror elements) but it can't be accused of not having a definite ending and it still all fits well together enough for me. Empire is correct when it says "to state the exact subgenre Midnight Mass plays with would be to spoil things" - I suspected it was going to pull several things out of the bag and I picked up on some of them, but I didn't guess the central direction it decided to take (but even when that became clear, I still didn't know how things were going to pan out).

It's well acted (as Empire says "there are a lot of monologues") with Hamish Linklater being very good as Father Hill in a, shall we say, morally ambiguous role. Zach Gifford and Kate Siegel (who we saw in The Fall Of The House Of Usher - completely unrelated to her being Mrs Mike Flanagan, I'm sure) are also excellent in slightly more normal roles (at least to start with) - they have some really beautiful scenes together, including the "what happens when you die" discussion (which is quite lovely and thought-provoking) and the thing that happens at the end of episode 4, which manages to be both lovely and horrible at the same time (it's really well written and I totally didn't get where it was going until about ten seconds beforehand, which was a real "oh no!" sad moment).

Everyone else in the cast slots in nicely, but I'm going to specifically call out Samantha Sloyan in a very interesting and well-written role as a nominally religious person, but with skewed interpretations and motivations - she believes she's doing the right thing but boy is she way off the mark. The outcomes here are "somewhat" extreme, but you can see how these sort of things happen every day to a lesser degree - and Samantha sells it really well. 

Apparently Mike Flanagan is better known for adapting other's work but this was his baby which he'd been planning for ages and I suspect he was working out some issues in the process ("there are a lot of monologues"!) but it's all well put together and looks very nice, with the remote island setting working well. 

I read a review that said people often don't like horror because many characters only exist to be killed off and so aren't properly filled out. but that's very much not the case here with a lot of different and fully formed personalities on show. I really liked this - there was a whole lot in there to unpick and some of it really made me think and some of it was quite emotional as well. You''ll need to be in the mood to both suspend your disbelief and properly pay attention but I think this is well worth it and I'm happy that Empire pointed me at it. 

And somewhat surprisingly, that's it for the year from Empire because we've already met Succession (#4/#4), Wandavision (#4/#16), Mare Of Easttown (#2/#3) and It's A Sin (#1/#1) - yes, I decided against watching a couple of the entries but we've raced through the rest of it because we saw a decent amount of correlation between the lists this year. Which I'll obviously investigate in my follow-on wrap-up post...

#10 - Enjoyable nonsense