MEDIA LIFE MAGAZINE: 'Bedlam,' slow build could drive you nuts
BBC America horror series about an insane asylum takes its time
By Tom Conroy
Oct 6, 2011
In one of those TV programming coincidences that occur more frequently than one might imagine, two cable channels have just premiered supernatural dramas about hard-to-unload real estate: FX’s “American Horror Story” and BBC America’s “Bedlam.”
It’s an open question which building would be less appealing: the former show’s mansion, in which the previous owners died in a murder-suicide, or the latter’s apartment house, a converted insane asylum called Bedlam Heights, which comes complete with a graveyard on the grounds. But in terms of entertainment and chills, the American show beats the British.
Airing on Saturdays at 9 p.m., “Bedlam” rather predictably lets us know early on that something creepy happened in the mental hospital before the renovations began, and also rather predictably, it doles out the clues slowly. Even at the end of the six episodes that the channel made available for review, we’re not sure why so many deceased patients continue to haunt the place.
The episodes settle into a pattern in which a tenant has frightening visitations from a troubled spirit and then the complex’s resident ghost whisperer, Jed (Theo James), helps the spirit find closure and stop bothering the living. This template has been worn out on American TV...
Bedlam airs Saturdays at 9/8C on BBC America.
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