‘I would advise all our viewers to turn away immediately and watch something more pleasant instead,” says the writer and narrator Lemony Snicket (played by Patrick Warburton) at the start of – and throughout – A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix). It’s a fake attempt to put you off, as Snicket does in his series of gothic novels about the life of the poor Baudelaire orphans from which this is adapted.
That’s just the start of the faithfulness. Plot, postmodern suburban steampunkery, black comedy, jokes, vocabulary explanations (no, loco parentis does not mean you have mad parents), themes of grief and abandonment, the wisdom of children compared to grownups who have been corrupted by society, the joy of reading and learning and libraries (save them!). Check, check, check – all are excellently here, present and correct.
This loyalty is not surprising, given that Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket’s writer – keep up!) adapted his own work, penned the scripts and co-produced the TV series. And a long-form show allows for a more accurate and detailed tracing of the original than the big-screen adaptation with Jim Carrey, Billy Connolly and the very overrated Meryl Streep. This version gets through the books at a rate of half per episode, so the initial batch of eight covers only the first four volumes of 13. Plenty of scope for more, then.
If you love the novels, you’ll almost certainly love this. I hadn’t read the books (though plenty of adults do, and many references – from James Brown to Herman Melville – might sail over a child’s head) until I sped through the first, The Bad Beginning, on a loyalty check. Then I binged on all eight episodes in Netflix, and, well, quite loved it.
It looks fabulous, very Burtonesque. I enjoyed the big budget sets, the colours, the flying lizards and ironic serpents, Lake Lachrymose, inventive Violet’s amazing inventions, baby Sunny’s human lathe dental skills, and the appearance of Don Johnson (Don Johnson!) from my own childhood, owner of the Miserable Mill here. It’s smart and funny and fun. But – and this might have something to do with me not exactly being the target audience age – I never quite got lost in its world.
There’s a real lack of menace here. Yes, Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), I am talking to you: more pantomime villain – you don’t scare me. Without genuine evil or danger for the Baudelaire children – Violet, Klaus and Sunny – to overcome, I found it harder to feel their pain or care about their fate. And then all the gags and the clever self-references begin to get just a tiny bit annoying.
So Mr Snicket, careful with all the warnings. Come the next lot, this viewer may turn away … but to watch something less pleasant instead.
