The Devil 39;s Hour 3.33
Thora Buckner
The Devil's hour executive producer Sue Vertue told us: "So it's a psychological thriller, which is written beautifully. Lucy is a social worker. She wakes up at 3.33am every morning without fail and sort of has nightmares. And she's got a son who's seven. Psychiatrists are just trying to work out just the house. He doesn't smile, he doesn't do anything. And her mother seems to talk to ghosts. So it's all kind of schizophrenic. And Peter Capaldi plays Gideon, who's kind of connected, plus there are murders. Nikesh Patel and Alex Ferns play two policemen trying to sort everything out. It's a complex thing to do. It's sort of scary, but it's a love story too and it's also funny."
Jessica Raine told us: "Lucy wakes up at 3:33am Every morning, and she has done her whole life when she doesn't know why. As Sue mentioned, she has an eight year old son who is a blank. So she's trying to get to the bottom of why her son is emotionless. And she has a very challenging job. She's a child protection officer and on top of this, there are a series of quite dark happenings around her and she's the connection. Peter Capaldi's character is kind of piecing it all together very slowly. But you don't know how or why she gets very alarmed. There are Deja Vu flashes of a memory that she knows in her head is not real, but she knows in her guts that they are so she kind of thinks she's on the brink of insanity a lot of the time."
'The nature of the piece is quite spectacularly dark. And that can be quite enjoyable. My part, in a way, has quite thin experiences, because a lot of the time he's chained to a table. As you can see, from the clip (see above), the summer has fallen through the cracks a little bit, and that he's responsible for a number of very disturbing crimes, and certainly it's getting closer to Lucy to her child. It does seems very likely that he's going to do something very terrible to them. But he is not what he appears. He has a plan. It's a very clever compulsive plan. And he is scary. He belongs to the night!"
"Oh, the reason that he's doing is not what you think. Or maybe it is. The brilliant thing about this project, for me was the scripts were so wonderful and inventive. And it's such a brilliant idea at the core. It was a no brainer to work with Tom and just the cash flow, two of our most talented and lovely actors. And of course, Sue is one of the greatest producers and nicest people on the planet. On occasion, occasional collaborations with Steven Moffat were involved as well. So it was a no brainer, and really brilliant."
Also starring in the Amazon Prime series are former EastEnders actor Alex Ferns, who we do know plays a policeman, plus comedy star Meera Syal and Phil Dunster, although their characters are yet to be announced.
I'm a huge fan of television so I really have found the perfect job, as I've been writing about TV shows, films and interviewing major television, film and sports stars for over 25 years. I'm currently TV Content Director on What's On TV, TV Times, TV and Satellite Week magazines plus Whattowatch.com. I previously worked on Woman and Woman's Own in the 1990s. Outside of work I swim every morning, support Charlton Athletic football club and get nostalgic about TV shows Cagney & Lacey, I Claudius, Dallas and Tenko. I'm totally on top of everything good coming up too."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Nicholas CannonSocial Links NavigationTV Content Director on TV Times, What's On TV and TV & Satellite WeekI'm a huge fan of television so I really have found the perfect job, as I've been writing about TV shows, films and interviewing major television, film and sports stars for over 25 years. I'm currently TV Content Director on What's On TV, TV Times, TV and Satellite Week magazines plus Whattowatch.com. I previously worked on Woman and Woman's Own in the 1990s. Outside of work I swim every morning, support Charlton Athletic football club and get nostalgic about TV shows Cagney & Lacey, I Claudius, Dallas and Tenko. I'm totally on top of everything good coming up too.
Collision courses are set by a murder investigation led by DI Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel), who has an unfortunate fear of blood but the perfect offsider in DS Nick Holness, a shrewd, bristling walrus of a man played by Alex Ferns (who won the Scottish BAFTA for Chernobyl nearly two decades after winning Villain of the Year at the British Soap Awards for his work on EastEnders).
British singer, songwriter and playwright Nicole Lecky stars in this dark and engrossing musical drama based on her one-woman show, Superhoe. Lecky is aspiring singer and rapper Sasha, who is about to get kicked out by her mum and stepfather and needs to find a way to make money to stay off the mean streets of London. Enter high-living social-media influencer Carly (Lara Peake), who turns out to make most of her money doing sex-adjacent stuff on an OnlyFans-style website. Slightly gritty with some good songs.
In the Florida panhandle, where the alligators waddle down the street, there lives a shut-in named Bell (Luke Kirby, who won an Emmy for playing Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) who lives in a grand old mansion and a seersucker suit. When a murdered man turns up in his azaleas, Bell finally forces himself to leave the property and try to solve the crime with the help of a put-upon traffic cop (Tiana Okoye). Clever, goofy fun in the tradition of Florida types like Carl Hiaasen.
Does Peter Capaldi get his Hannibal Lecter on in this spooky new British chiller-thriller? Sort of \\u2013 he\\u2019s not a serial killer (we don\\u2019t think) but he is a fairly scary man named Gideon, who happens to be possessed of certain uncanny information that you wouldn\\u2019t believe if he told you. Though perhaps you would believe it if you were single mum Lucy Chambers (Jessica Raine), a good woman on her last frayed nerve.
Lucy\\u2019s highly stressful job in child protection is essentially the least of her worries. She also has an unsettling, emotionally inert young son named Isaac (impressive newcomer Benjamin Chivers), who behaves in ways that defy psychiatric diagnosis, and who sees people that aren\\u2019t there. Well, presumably they\\u2019re not there \\u2013 who knows?
Lucy also wakes with a start every night at 3.33am \\u2013 the middle of the so-called Devil\\u2019s Hour. And she has split-second visions that she characterises as deja vu of things that never happened (perhaps she\\u2019s unfamiliar with the concept of precognition).
As the series begins, Lucy and Gideon aren\\u2019t even on each other\\u2019s radar. Lucy is dealing with a violent client that she fears will kill his former partner and daughter. She also has an ambiguous sexual relationship with her ex, Mike (Ted Lasso\\u2019s Phil Dunster), who wants nothing to do with their son because the kid doesn\\u2019t provide the affection he expects.
Certain stars seem to have aligned for this series \\u2013 former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, who cast Capaldi as the Doctor, is on board as an executive producer \\u2013 and it\\u2019s assured, tense and intriguing from the outset.
Raine, who was so brilliant as the scheming, libidinous Catherine Parr in Becoming Elizabeth (Stan*), is a standout once more, giving her character the frayed, exasperated edge of a highly competent and conscientious woman who just can\\u2019t quite keep on top of everything.
The luxurious deep pile of the casting extends to Meera Syal as the umpteenth specialist to whom Lucy has dragged her son. Created by comedian and playwright Tom Moran, it\\u2019s well worth checking out.
Genre titan Guillermo del Toro indulges his inner Alfred Hitchcock, relishing his little introductions to each of the eight hour-long films in this exceptional horror anthology. Each of the pieces is directed by another director (hand-chosen by del Toro), but the man himself wrote one of the scripts, and another is based on a story of his. And he\\u2019s in good company in the writing credits \\u2013 two other pieces are based on stories by the great H.P. Lovecraft.
The series begins with a ripper, Lot 36, written by del Toro and directed by longtime del Toro collaborator Guillermo Navarro, who won an Oscar for his cinematography on Pan\\u2019s Labyrinth. When a desperate war veteran (Tim Blake Nelson) buys the contents of an abandoned storage locker he gets more than he bargained for \\u2013 a lot more.
Another standout is The Autopsy, which features a brilliantly measured performance by the octogenarian F. Murray Abraham as a coroner called in to piece together a series of horrific events. All in all, it\\u2019s the best thing for horror fans since Shudder went live.