James Delingpole James Delingpole

Riveting: Netflix’s The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself reviewed

Unlike so many gore-fests it never forgets that its main job is not to gross you out but to entertain you

Star-cross’d lovers: Nadia Parkes as Annalise and Jay Lycurgo as Nathan. Credit: Teddy Cavendish / © 2021 Netflix, Inc.

Gratingly edgy soundtrack, stomach-churning gore, torture, witchcraft, sadism and an indigestible title. The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself sounds exactly the sort of series most of us would wish to avoid.

It’s aimed at young adults (based on a trilogy by Sally Green called Half Bad) and the only reason I was keen to give it a try was that it has been freely adapted by Joe Barton. For my money, Barton is – along with Jesse Succession Armstrong – the most exciting and original screenwriter currently working in TV. His scripts (Giri/Haji; The Lazarus Project) are so engaging, pacy, witty, charming and weirdly unannoying that I bet whatever book he adapted – Klaus Schwab’s Covid-19: The Great Reset; Matt Hancock’s diaries – would instantly be transformed into something riveting.

This one concerns two warring tribes of witches, the goodie-two-shoes Fairborns (whose magic powers tend to involve nice things like making plants grow well and manipulating water) and the more menacing but undoubtedly cooler Bloods who hang out in bars drinking vodka shots. But we can tell from the start that all is not what it seems because the head Fairborn, Soul (Paul Ready), resembles one of those sanctimonious, passive aggressive parents who runs the events committee at your kids’ primary school and you’re always trying to avoid. The Bloods, on the other hand, despite their toxic reputation seem likeable and misunderstood – especially the lead character, Nathan (Jay Lycurgo).

Unlike so many gore-fests it never forgets that its main job is not to gross you out but to entertain you

Nathan, 16, is horribly abused by the Fairborns because his estranged father Marcus (a cross between Sirius Black from Harry Potter and Sylar from Heroes) is an especially evil Blood who has been killing their people in myriad hideous ways.

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