I’m embarrassed to confess that the reason that I even learned about BBC 3’s The Fades was in a small review in Star Magazine that likened it to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer with an English accent.” Regardless of the source, that capper line made it impossible for me not to watch it. And after the delivery of this opening exchange between two of the main characters of the show, I was, indeed hooked:
Paul: “This is a bad idea.”
Mac: “Correction: this is a good idea with bad possibilities.”
The show is chockfull of these kind of fantastic lines (list accompanying below), mostly delivered by Mac, and also shows that Mac is a bad influence on poor Paul who’s most likely wound too tight for a 17 year old. Of course, it makes sense – he has terrible dreams that lead him to wake up in soaked bed sheets from peeing himself. He makes drawings of these creatures, he’s different, or “special” but he doesn’t want to be either.
When we first meet Paul and his best friend, they are wandering around an old, abandoned shopping center. He manages stumble into Neil, who shoots at him, and Sarah, who falls through the ceiling, thrown by the very creature that we see Paul has drawn from his dreams. Paul picks up the bullet that Neil shot at him – wincing initially because it’s hot (a detail I appreciated) and follows. The creature – reminding me of the zombies in I Am Legend – corners and attacks Neil and licks his eye, rendering it glacomic cloudy. Paul is shellshocked when Mac finds him.
It turns out the Sarah and Paul have the same visions of falling ash, the aftermath of what Sarah defines as the end of the world. Before she dies she tells Neil that the Fates are coming and the world is dying and that the only thing that mattered was Mark. It turns out Mark is her estranged husband, and Paul’s history teacher.
Paul and Mac are definitively high school losers, pointed out by his twin sister Anna who’s embarrassed by his existence. Her friend – and Paul’s crush – Jay seems to feel differently, as she goes out of her way to acknowledge Paul and flirt with him, mildly. Taking a swig from his cigarette she then tells him she has the “taste of your spit in my mouth.” Paul’s too awkward to smoothly respond or react.
Helen is a female vicar and a healer who tries to help Neil and his eye, since Sarah is beyond repair. She helps Neil strap himself into a chair with masking tape while she sticks his eye to extract the poison and then attempts a shaking flash of energy light that, unfortunately, cannot help because the cornea has been infected. She falls back, exhausted, exhaling a moth much like John Coffey in The Green Mile. Neil’s concern from the attack is that Fades are not supposed to be able to touch, and that Sarah’s proclamation (prophecy, as it were) is coming true: “[He] becomes flesh, others will follow…So death becomes life, so life becomes death.” It is Sarah – as a seer – that her visions are the fulfillment of the dream into reality. Helen, however, feels as if the world will either end, or they will stop it, or something stronger will come to save them. It’s a black-and-white statement, but one I’m sure she’s come to believe as a hard fact and a driving force to keep going.
Neil finds Paul and explains who the Fades are: they are the dead that don’t ascend from earth when they die and are stuck on earth. Paul’s confused and asks if Neil is a ghostbuster, and he laughs, amused probably for the first time in a long time.
Paul runs through a walkway and also through a dead girl he’s seen before and though it seems he doesn’t notice he’s pushed through her he notices the energy particles she’s left behind that resemble the ash from his vision dreams.
Mark gets called into the police station and is interrogated about Sarah’s whereabouts, since her DNA and a modified gun have been found but she hasn’t. It’s hard to read how Mark feels about Sarah. When we first meet him he’s trying to bed someone else, over explaining that his wife is not really his wife anymore. But when he gets home after the interrogation, it’s clear he’s distraught.
Dead birds are a ‘tell’ in this show also, as they appear before the dead seem to, initially Paul and Mac stumble upon one on their “good idea” and here and there they appear or fall. Paul and Mac spy on the cool kids in the woods when Paul notices a spirit with an illumination coming from her chest. Neil appears and it turns out it’s Sarah. Neil explains the lights are beacons for the dead as they look for an ascension point. When that light turns off (or fades, I imagine) then they know they are trapped on Earth. As they follow Sarah as she looks for salvation, Helen is gathering weapons and is attacked – and it looks like killed – by the same creature that attacked Neil.
Sarah’s light turns off and now she’s trapped. While Neil apologizes to Sarah, Paul faints and a hailstorm of dead birds falls around them. Paul falls into a vision of his bloodied body as he drags himself through the ashes searching for something, possibly dying. He comes out of the vision with Neil begging him to tell him what he saw.
The show is amazing, dark and funny, familiar yet unique. The only distraction is the muting of their cursing, understandable for American TV viewing. I’m really hoping that Paul is the savior that Helen referenced. And I really hope Mac continues to deliver lines like these:
“I’m not ready to die. I haven’t decided what my last words will be.”
(After hiding out in the girl’s bathroom with Paul where they listen in on a girl pee and let out a fart): “Sadly, that might’ve been the most sexual experience of my entire life.”
(In response to Paul’s concern about his dream coming true, asking “Who am I?”) : “Heather Langenkamp from Nightmare on Elm Street.”
(When discussing authors and their reasons for writing Paul’s life story): “Tolkein’s twisted sexuality […] The eye of Mordor [he’s] clearly petrified of vaginas.”
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Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia's dream is to write life-tweaking films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K. She is working on her next short about the Mayan Calender that she hopes to finish before the end of the world. Ever the late bloomer, she finally started a blog chronicling her misadventures as one half of a long distance relationship (http://llddr.wordpress.com). She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend's or Bruce Campbell's. And, in the interest of time, she'd like to start thanking the Academy now. 
