Man lives in a TV-lit living room of what he believes to be reality. And by the grace of all that is evil, reality will one day include The CW ordering to series their remake of the classic horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside. The pilot has landed its first star, as 24: Redemption’s Kris Lemche has signed on for the lead role.
“But wait,” you might be saying. “Why would this anthology series have a lead character?” Lemche will play the one regular character that’s threaded through the entire shebang. He’ll star as Newman, the tortured and haggard “guide to the unsuspecting,” according to Deadline. (Where can I apply for that job?) He is the one who stumbles upon the terrifying Darkside and understands why the nether realm is causing all of the strange events that will make up the series’ stories.
The problem is, he hasn’t quite grasped how to stop the events from happening. Will it all have something to do with the deep, dark secrets that he keeps hidden? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
This new iteration of Tales from the Darkside comes from the brilliant mind of novelist Joe Hill, who wrote the excellent novels Horns and NOS4A2, as well as co-created the near-perfect genre-mashing comic series Locke & Key. Hill wrote the pilot, and he’s producing alongside Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, two names that have been attached to several other mythology-building franchises.
With an opening title sequence that still haunts me to this day, Tales from the Darkside was created by Night of the Living Dead’s George Romero, running for four seasons from 1984 to 1988. Joe Hill’s father, the inimitable Stephen King, wrote a couple of episodes, as did other famed horror writers. It eventually spawned a theatrical feature in 1990.
Kris Lemche is no stranger to the horror genre, and one of his first roles was in an episode of Goosebumps, a fellow horror-lite anthology. His feature career has seen him in things like David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps, Marc Evans’ My Little Eye, James Wong’s Final Destination 3, and Jordan Galland’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead. More recently, he was seen on the big screen in In Time and on the small screen in Syfy’s Haven. He’s currently filming Lucas Elliot Eberl and Edgar Morris’ drama You Above All.
Tales from the Darkside is the latest in a long line of new anthology series that are trying to achieve the success earned by recent shows such as American Horror Story, True Detective and Fargo. Here’s hoping it’s solid enough to sway The CW to turn it into something big. There can never be enough weird horror on TV.
