Review: Wolfblood: Episodes 1-2 (Or: Maybe it's time to be a little less cynical)

Although, as I’ve already said time and again, I never go into a TV show wanting to hate it, there are definitely a heck of a lot of shows I go into where I’m expecting to hate it. Case in point: Wolfblood.

 

Because it’d be pretty hard to deny that, based on the preview material, Wolfblood looked atrocious. Let’s face it, CBBC needed some new dramas, what with the stars of Sarah Jane Adventures and Tracy Beaker Returns respectively dead and on Strictly Come Dancing, The Sparticle Mystery unlikely to be recomissioned on the grounds of being utterly wretched, and M.I.High finally consigned back to the deepest level of hell from whence it came. But, to kick off the brand new season of programming… this? This cynical kid’s-show-by-the-numbers, coming off as a desperate attempt to cash in on the success of Young Dracula, with its two leads blatantly cast for their vague resemblance to Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart circa the first Twilight movie, complete with vacuous stares into camera for the promotional shots… well, it didn’t look good. And the case certainly wasn’t helped by the promo material that advertised the show as focusing on:

“A mysterious race who have lived among humans for centuries by disguising their abilities and blending in. Wolfbloods have razor sharp senses with an amazing sense of smell, are incredibly fast and super strong. They also change into wolves every full moon…”

Can you spot what’s missing from that synopsis? Well, how about the word werewolves?! I’m telling you, as soon as I cottoned on to the deliberate, almost desperate attempt to avoid actually calling their werewolves… erm, werewolves, alarm bells started ringing in my head. Yes, in every piece of promotional material, this species is specifically referred to as ‘Wolfbloods.’ I mean, what exactly were they trying to do here? Were they seriously trying to convince us that werewolves were their own personal creation? Because I’ve got to tell you… people know about werewolves. They’re not exactly an obscure part of mythology.

You'll have to trust me on the whole 'Bella and Edward resemblance' thing- it doesn't really show up in this picture, what with the 'yellow eyes' effect that they almost never actually use in the series. Also, I would have done a google search for Twilight images, but, well, then I'd have to gouge out my eyes with razors.

So, yeah. Going into this… well, I was pretty much convinced it was going to suck.

Boy, did I get that wrong.

I mean, yeah, it’s got its flaws, but two episodes in, Wolfblood is building up to be about 85% everything I want in a kids’ drama. See, in case I haven’t made this point pretty clear over the years, the best way to write a children’s drama is to write a drama featuring children. Don’t patronise them, don’t talk down to them; children know when you’re doing that, and they don’t like it. I’m sure quite a few people will also say that kids’ dramas have got to contain relevant issues to a younger audience but, well, since conflict progresses naturally from character, and you’ve already got young characters, then, if the writer is actually talented, kids’ issues should just be the next natural step forward. It’s too early to tell how the Wolfblood writers will address those kinds of issues, but, for now, the characters in place are pretty promising. I mean, they lack the warm humour and memorable eccentricity of the Young Dracula characters, but they’re still okay. Trust me, it’ll be a long time before we get another kids’ show as brilliant as Young Dracula.

And yet still more convincing than Asylum of the Daleks.

Kicking off the first episode, Lone Wolf, we meet our main character, Maddy, a teenage girl who is secretly a Wolfblood. And yes, they do persist with the whole ‘Wolfblood-not-werewolf’ thing, but it’s not nearly as annoying as I thought. On the whole, they use the term ‘Wolfblood’ to describe the biological process that drives them, rather than the species. Sure, I can get behind that: I’ve been watching kids’ shows for so long that my suspension of disbelief can pretty much be seen from space.


Anyway, Maddy is an insecure social outcast with anger issues brought on by her secret double life and having to keep her parents in check (as in most kids’ shows, Maddy’s Mum and Dad are markedly less mature than she is)… fairly standard CBBC heroine, but there’s a reason some things are the norm. She’s got a fairly sharp wit on her, but realistically so, and she’s not afraid to admit when she’s made mistakes- again, fairly standard stuff, but a massive relief after five years of the horrendously perfect quasi-superheroes of Sarah Jane Adventures. The other lead is Rhydian, a Wolfblood living in foster care who provides us with our gateway into this world: as he’s never known another Wolfblood, Maddy and her parents have to gradually explain everything about what he is to him. He’s another seething fountain of angst, but, to be honest, there aren’t many werewolves in fiction that aren’t.

Then there’s our standard ‘normal’ sidekicks for the series, Shannon and Tom. Shannon is probably the most well-developed character so far: the most geeky of the group, she’s obsessed with proving the existence of a mysterious beast that roams the local woods, something which has driven her all her life, causing her to start up the school’s photography club in the hope that someone will get a photo of it. Tom is… the black one. I don’t know, he likes football, and that’s about it so far. But even so, the character is already working as a pretty good straight man to Shannon.

Not only is Shannon the only character to have any real development so far, she's also the only one to actually have a Northern accent. Well, one that doesn't keep slipping, anyway. I hereby tentatively dub her 'The Jolly Gnu's favourite character.'

The background characters are… eh. As is usually in this kind of set up, pretty much everyone except the four leads is some kind of bully who likes to torment our heroes. I don’t know, in kids’ fiction there never seems to be any middle ground, no bystanders that just stay out of things. You’re either a main character, or a dick. At the moment, they’re ranging from generic douchebag in Jimmy and his gang, to the kind of bizarre Essex girl stereotype I thought we’d grown out of back in M.I.High in the local girl gang, who never seem to do anything except follow Rhydian around, making comments about how hot he is. I’m not seeing it myself.

"Grr, I'm a transparently mean and nasty bully, like those that totally exist in real life!"

What I am seeing, however, is the aforementioned blatant resemblance, at the very least in silhouette, between Maddy and Rhydian, and Bella and Edward from Twilight. This is so, so painfully obvious in the scene where they first meet in class, with the slow-mo walking amongst the desks and the prolonged to the point of embarrassing eye contact. It’s irritatingly likely that this is the reason Aimee Kelly and Bobby Lockwood were cast, because it sure as heck wasn’t for their acting ability- Kelly in paricular has so sense of comic timing whatsoever.

That said, even by episode two, Mysterious Developments, the acting and direction are beginning to tighten up to match the excellent scripts, and the characters finally begin to come to life. After the character establishment of Lone Wolf, we can get down to the meat of the storytelling. We find out more of Shannon’s backstory, and also discover that a rogue Wolfblood is at large, roaming the countryside terrorising livestock. And I’m calling it now: it’s the teacher. There’s no point in it not being anyone we know, and given that Maddy and Rhydian’s form tutor has basically chosen to be horrible to them for no good reason at every opportunity so far, my bet is that he is the rogue Wolfblood working to keep his identity a secret- that’s why he keeps trying to close the photography club down.

Mysterious Developments also introduces the major weak link of the series: the constant parallels between transforming into a wolf… and having sex. Maddy is annoyed that she ‘hasn’t done it yet,’ whereas Rhydian has ‘done it twice’ and ‘knows more about it’ than she does. Then we’ve got the painfully protracted subplot about Maddy’s parents needing to sit them both down and have a talk about ‘doing it safely together.’ It’s so very obvious I actually feel a bit dirty watching it.

"Time for dinner! And by 'dinner,' I mean 'an orgy!'"
Eurgh. Seriously, if I didn't like the whole 'euphemism for sex' thing when Doctor Who did it (both in the Classic Series with 'swimming' and in the New Series with 'dancing,' I'm definitely not going to like it in an actual CBBC show.

Now, what else can I nitpick? Well, how about the location shooting? Now, this is actually a positive nitpick, in that what I actually mean is that I want to see more of it. I actually keep forgetting that this is meant to be set in Northumbria, because it might as well be any generic town. But then we get those stunning forest shots, not to mention the downright gorgeous village they’ve filmed a lot of the exterior shots in, and I just want to live there. And I live in Winchester, the most beautiful city on Earth, it takes a lot to make me want to move.

But you know what? All this debating of the show’s pros and cons is immaterial when it comes down to it, because all I’m doing is skirting around the real reason I already love Wolfblood: that absolutely brilliant theme tune. It’s a kind of Celtic folky number that matches the location (and hopefully the general feel of the series as a whole) perfectly. So, go on. Go onto iPlayer, if only to hear that incredible opening theme. And then stay for the rest of the episode, because it’s one of the best CBBC dramas in years.