Sex equals death in any TV or film venture involving teenagers and the supernatural – we know this. Chambers takes the trope literally, giving its sullen 16-year-old protagonist Sasha (Sivan Alyra Rose) a heart attack as she tries to lose her virginity to her boyfriend, one dark and stormy night in a small Arizona town.
Alas for us all, she is somehow delivered unto a hospital in time to get a heart transplant and nine more episodes to sulk through.
Her new heart comes from Becky LeFevre, a girl born with every advantage – unlike Sasha, who has Native American ancestry and lives with her impoverished uncle Frank (Marcus LaVoi) who scrapes a living with his tiny exotic fish business. Becky’s parents are keen that her organ’s recipient should inherit them, too.
Soon, Sasha – maintaining a level of ingratitude that, like Rose’s relentlessly leaden performance, takes on an almost mesmerising life of its own – is being absorbed into the LeFevres’ world. They give her the scholarship founded in their daughter’s name, a car and invite her to family events.
Soon after that, Sasha is sensing Becky’s presence within and without. You know the drill, I assure you: flickering lights, mysterious sobbing sounds from empty toilet cubicles at school, symbols scratched on doors. She glimpses her own face in Becky’s family photographs, sees the Beckster’s face in the mirror instead of her own, dreams of things only Becky would know, aces tests she couldn’t possibly have aced alone, writes with her left hand like Becky, visits clairvoyants who are too terrified to say what they see. And so, very much, on.
It’s like a Bunty comic strip made flesh – The Possession of Pauline – except Bunty comics were always sterling examples of propulsive storytelling and snappy dialogue. Chambers is mostly characterised by longueurs and deathless lines such as “Sometime rules are just there to keep us from feeling exactly what we need to feel” and “She hated being called Rebecca – she said it sounded like an accusation.”
The frustrating thing (apart from the fact that nobody has the gumption to tell Sasha to snap out of her perennial mardy mood) is that there is potential here. You could use the setup to explore privilege, the shaping of expectations by poverty, weigh up the effects of nature versus nurture. You could fling the whole lot over into a satirical look at late western capitalism, as Chambers does occasionally try to do, lingering pointedly on Becky’s high-school amenities (which include a nap room, free condoms and a life coach) and the various new-agey rituals her parents and their friends put stock in.
Or it could be a portrait of the profound effects of parental grief. Tony Goldwyn as father Ben and especially Uma Thurman as mother Nancy (a heartbreaking performance simply radiating pain, which seems to be coming in on another plane entirely) could carry it easily. And Thurman would surely relish being given more to do than wear off-the-shoulder cardigans and run alongside deer to symbolise The Journey Through Bereavement.
As things stand, it’s a derivative, badly paced, supernatural slog that substitutes jump-cuts for actual shocks, and Sasha’s extensive nail art for character development and delivers little in the way of surprise – or frankly, even expected – twists. There will be no harm done when this one gives up the ghost.
