<\/p>\n
\u201cInterview With the Vampire,\u201d the opening salvo of AMC\u2019s attempt to turn the oeuvre of fantasy author Anne Rice into a so-called Immortal Universe of television shows, is one of the best shows on air<\/a>. Smart, sensual and frequently funny, \u201cInterview\u201d manages the balancing act of all great adaptations in both preserving and updating its source material; I ecstatically await a Season 3 styled as a rock documentary<\/a> about the vampire Lestat (Sam Reid).<\/p>\n This master plan\u2019s sophomore effort, \u201cMayfair Witches,\u201d has been a relative letdown. The\u00a0 scattered drama lacks the passion and eccentricity that are the, well, lifeblood of \u201cInterview With the Vampire.\u201d Nor does the starring vehicle for Alexandra Daddario offer a concise, specific take to differentiate itself from Rice\u2019s original \u2014 its own version of making Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) a Black man who falls in love with his maker. A second season came and went earlier this year with minimal fanfare.<\/p>\n The third Immortal Universe show, \u201cAnne Rice\u2019s Talamasca: The Secret Order\u201d \u2014\u00a0which we will refer to from here on out as \u201cTalamasca,\u201d because let\u2019s not be ridiculous \u2014\u00a0sadly hews closer to \u201cMayfair\u201d than \u201cInterview\u201d in quality. The six-episode season, which was provided to critics in its entirety, is a disjointed and muddled attempt to turn Rice\u2019s centuries-old secret society into a vehicle for a half-hearted spy thriller. The premiere has a couple bright spots in the form of cameos from \u201cInterview\u201d star Eric Bogosian and, in a confusing but welcome appearance, Jason Schwartzman as a vampire who lives in the penthouse of the Dakota. (Maybe he\u2019s a big Rice fan, if not enough of one to stick around past a single episode.) Once these training wheels come off, though, \u201cTalamasca\u201d never achieves the momentum to chart its own path.<\/p>\n What is the Talamasca, exactly, and what do its members do? Answering these questions would seem to be a basic prerequisite of a show named after the fictional group, but \u201cTalamasca\u201d will leave viewers mostly in the dark. Creator John Lee Hancock (\u201cThe Blind Side\u201d) and co-showrunner Mark Lafferty (\u201cHalt and Catch Fire\u201d) position protagonist Guy (Nicholas Denton) as a classic audience surrogate, speed-running a chosen one narrative as the telepath is recruited by mysterious Brit Helen (Elizabeth McGovern, channeling her \u201cDownton Abbey\u201d co-stars) to join the Talamasca in lieu of starting a lucrative law job. Where Guy\u2019s abilities come from and how they fit into this world\u2019s cosmology are never fully explained. Supposedly, the Talamasca are a mortal-led counterweight to paranormal forces like vampires and witches, but they clearly have some supernatural tools of their own.<\/p>\n Guy himself proves as generic a hero as his name. Denton, an Australian who could be cousins with Eddie Redmayne, struggles with his American accent even after his character gets shipped off to London to check in on a Talamasca \u201cmother house\u201d when another operative turns up dead. His training is supposed to take a year, but gets crammed into a week because time is of the essence \u2014\u00a0a compression that reads like a metaphor for this overstuffed, rushed-feeling season. Guy gets little motivation or personality besides the search for his mother, a fellow telepath he grew up in foster care believing to be dead. It turns out the Talamasca was behind not just his placement with a Florida family, but the scholarships that afforded him an elite education.<\/p>\n As if the Talamasca\u2019s deep pockets and connections weren\u2019t shady enough, Guy keeps getting standard-issue warnings about how \u201cthey\u2019re lying to you\u201d and \u201cthey can\u2019t be trusted.\u201d These flags come from a slew of secondary characters who abruptly rise and fade in significance as Guy tries to figure out where his loyalties should lie. The constantly shifting allegiances are meant to form a twisty yarn in the aggregate, though the effect is largely just confusing \u2014\u00a0especially when Helen gets a subplot investigating her own past that distracts from her role as the chilly, withholding boss.<\/p>\n The throughline here is a hunt for a MacGuffin known as the 752, named for the year of the Talamasca\u2019s founding. It\u2019s the backup of an archive that burned 50 years ago in a fire at the organization\u2019s Amsterdam outpost, and Helen is hot on its trail at the same time as Jasper (William Fichtner), a vampire with an axe to grind against the Talamasca. Fichtner is alone in the cast in giving a performance with the flair Rice\u2019s prose deserves, perhaps because only Jasper gets nonsensical-yet-hilarious lines like \u201cYou are a flea bouncing off the hard dick of our immortal history!\u201d But Jasper is outnumbered by perfunctory elements like the 752, Guy\u2019s mother and Helen\u2019s own long-lost family, none of which successfully infuse a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n With \u201cTalamasca,\u201d the underwhelming entries in the Immortal Universe now outnumber the exciting ones. Though \u201cTalamasca\u201d ends with enough balls in the air that a Season 2 seems assured, no additional concepts have been ordered to series. Before that happens, some introspection might be in order as to why neither \u201cMayfair\u201d nor \u201cTalamasca\u201d has measured up to the operatic thrills of \u201cInterview.\u201d Until then, fans will just have to wait for \u201cThe Vampire Lestat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnne Rice\u2019s Talamasca: The Secret Order\u201d will premiere with two episodes on AMC and AMC+ on Oct. 26 at 9 p.m. ET.<\/em><\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cInterview With the Vampire,\u201d the opening salvo of AMC\u2019s attempt to turn the oeuvre of fantasy author Anne Rice into a so-called Immortal Universe of television shows, is one of the best shows on air. Smart, sensual and frequently funny, \u201cInterview\u201d manages the balancing act of all great adaptations in both preserving and updating its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2116919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[378983,350640,391912,348167,348168,350639,360804,360802],"class_list":["post-2116918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-alexandra-daddario","tag-anne-rice","tag-immortal-universe","tag-interview-with-the-vampire","tag-jacob-anderson","tag-mayfair-witches","tag-talamasca","tag-the-vampire-lestat"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018Anne-Rices-Talamasca-Is-Another-Disappointing-Entry-in-AMCs-Immortal.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2116918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2116920,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116918\/revisions\/2116920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2116919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}