This year, Halloween falls on Saturday, traditionally the least watched night on TV. Perhaps this is appropriate. In 2015, TV can be anything suitable for a holiday: shocking, terrifying, cloyingly sweet, overly commercial, and very, very rude. But one thing he still struggles with is fear. Don’t believe me? Take a moment to think: what was the last regular TV show that was really scary? I don’t mean bit by bit awful, like one of Leatherface’s victims. I mean a show that is scary from top to bottom, from start to finish. And I mean the show, except let’s say fathers.

This is not so much a criticism as a fact of life. Movies, with their limited screening time, are especially good for keeping the mood going. When you sit down to watch a horror movie, you are essentially agreeing to be on your toes for 90 to 120 minutes. Television, by its very nature, requires variety in tone and pitch. Viewers simply cannot be asked to hold their breath for eight, ten, or even 22 hours a season. Try it and they will die even before your show. Instead, television has traditionally had to play on the fringes of horror films, creating entire series from cuts and scraps that are usually underestimated by viewers. Fangoria crowd: slow, painful buildup; dispassionate, yeoman-like investigation; long, sad ending. (Or, as in the case of the flattering Fox scream queens, the idea that a mockery can cut deeper than a knife.) A scary movie is a twist on a haunted house. Scary TV Show is more of a haunted timeshare. There should be at least the occasional gimmicks towards amenities like comfort and humor because, let’s be honest, you’ll be there for a while.

If anyone was going to crack the horror television code, I would expect it to be a paid service like HBO or Netflix, with their unlimited makeup budgets and the freedom to target a micro-targeted audience with the precision of a serial killer. But the two most successful horror-movie-challenge series both hail from the infernal “Saw” of mainstream cable television. FX american horror storiesquiet killing ratings in its fifth iteration, television has probably come closest to the specificity and enduring madness of cinema. This is partly due to the creative casting of the show and the insatiable thirds to the extreme. But let’s be honest: the most noteworthy aspect ASF it’s not a bearded lady, it’s the length of each season. By limiting each cycle to 13 hours and one story, the show’s one dissonant note can sound like a symphony. no one is watching ASF as much as one commits to that.

AMS the walking Dead even more remarkable. Not only is this distant television most popular show Among the highly coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic, he almost single-handedly refuted all the ideas outlined in my opening paragraph. Where most serialized dramas create a world and expand in it over time, adding characters, nuances and layers, the walking Dead has a guillotine where the engine of history should be. He has no interest in saving the world or curing a zombie outbreak. Instead, it sets base camp at a crushing moment when most dystopian films end, plunging into grief, violence, and loss. “All Fucked Up” is not a traditional starting point on television, but, again, the walking Dead not a traditional series. His remarkable prowess in areas often considered secondary – sound design, visual effects, editing and casting – has helped him to endure even when the plot veers decisively into a kind of sadistic nihilism. And, in a perverse way, a dull consistency the walking Dead – no matter what happens, every week someone gets bitten – that’s what saves it as a TV show. At that moment, constant, terrible suffering became as addictive as laughter.

This Sunday’s controversial episode actually reinforced the walking Deadconnection to other TVs. In the Jon Snow era, favorite shows have grown far beyond their time slots. The fandom is a full-contact sport that runs around the clock, seasons be damned. This showrunner is Scott M. Gimple should have qualified a major death – and thus an encroachment on his own dramatic narrative just minutes after it was launched – was further proof that the winking game no longer works in a world where everyone plays at such a high level. On the walking Dead, humans can just be huge buddies to a mass of zombies. But in fact, these characters are close people who are expected in our homes every week. The modern showrunner can and should scold them, but he must remember to respect them.

Despite this oversight, my main takeaway from Thank You was admiration. Though there are many nits left to choose from the walking DeadI’m deeply impressed by the show’s ability to take complex, fast-burning emotions like pain, stress, and desperation and compress them into the confines of a weekly series. The panicked, almost narcotic fugue state Nicholas fell into as he was surrounded by an incredible horde of zombies was contagious. I’m not saying I can understand the choice he made in that moment, but god, who could blame him? Over and over I find the scale of this season the walking Dead deeply unbalanced; death has long been everywhere, but rarely so monumental or seemingly inevitable. This ruthlessness is radical for television, and especially for Sunday night television, which has long been the warming heart of television week in the country. This is the rod that helped the walking Dead become the most terrifying television show in more than a literal sense; now it destroys the emotions, not just the insides.

On Saturday night, just when most kids will be counting their candy at home, two spooky, quirky series will premiere, each aiming to keep the pumpkin lantern glowing until November. Although SundanceTV Returned back with season 2 – I loved the first one – it’s Starz Ash vs Evil Dead it is actually the more familiar of the pair. That’s because it picks up a baggy story that first began in 1978, when two frustrated midwestern dramatic jerks named Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell made a bloody short film called In the forest. From this passage, an iconic empire arose: a trilogy favorite filmsas well as many video games, comics and unlimited possibilities for cosplay. The only tie between it all: Raimi’s inimitable tongue-in-cheek aesthetic and Campbell’s performance as Ashley “Ash” Williams, a one-armed everyman with the ability to summon spirits. Necronomicon. When ghouls come to the call, Ash is usually ready to deal with them with a barrage of witticisms and shotgun blasts. No more mountain climbing on the big screen (the cinematic reboot flopped in 2013) and nothing else. spiderman dancing According to the choreographer, the two have taken their signature chainsaw to the only frontier they have left: the small screen.

That’s the problem Ash vs Evil Dead: This is good. Better, it’s fun in a goofy, contagious way that’s the complete opposite. the walking Deadpouty frown. You don’t have to be familiar with the franchise’s history or humor before jumping in. I’d say the opening montage of a 57-year-old Campbell trying to squeeze into his belt is a pretty good introduction, as it’s a scene in which a Michigan detective (Jill Marie Jones) is attacked by a neck-wringing poltergeist whose head ends up exploding with the strength and fluid velocity of one of Gallagher’s overripe melons. What’s good about Ash vs Evil Dead it’s not that he doesn’t take himself seriously – although, come on, that’s not the case at all. The fact is that he chooses the details very carefully. must take seriously. Thus, Campbell – still the Iberico de Bellota of a Category B radio amateur – pays as much attention to Ash’s Chaplin antics as he does to swaggering chainsaw swings. And Raimi, who directed the first hour and co-wrote or produced the other nine, lends seriousness and wit to every high-jumping demon. With severed limbs and Saturday dinner references, this isn’t your father’s horror show. It’s your crazy uncle. And thank God for that.

At the other end of the spectrum is Returned. If Ash vs Evil Dead it is a gushing artery of jubilant blood, the French series is rigor mortis. In the first season, the inhabitants of a remote mountain town were decimated when their deceased relatives were suddenly brought back to life, seemingly unharmed and frozen to the age they were at the time of death. So: A teenage girl is suddenly reunited with her barely-adolescent twin, a young mother is visited by a fiancé who committed suicide while she was pregnant, a bar owner who happily buried his murderous brother years ago must find a way to accept him. back to the world. its orbit. It’s a bold premise, of course, and a smaller show would have turned down the pressure to come up with answers. But beauty Returned there was the awkward way in which he asked his heavy questions, the way he let his impossible dream of a premise slowly and imperceptibly collapse into a sour nightmare.

In season 2 Returned remains as awkward and elliptical as ever. Few shows are as breathtakingly beautiful; its palace of ghostly gray tones and harsh metallic light is reminiscent of the work of the Impressionist T-1000. And the music, once again composed by Scottish noise poets Mogwai, is subtle and disruptive. The flood cleansed the city, and the dead established their society in the mountains. The imminent birth of Adele’s (Clotilde Esme’s) baby – she was impregnated last season by the very late Simon (Pierre Perrier) – is what drives the plot, but the truth is that the plot feels almost secondary in such an eerie landscape. Really, Returned not so much frightening as haunting. In such a show, it is the living who slowly shed their masks to reveal the scarred monsters lurking beneath them. The supernatural is really just a mirror of the frightening possibilities of human nature. It is this psychological dissection, rather than the more bloody and literal one in which television is historically excellent. That’s because when the movie ends, you can quickly exit the theater and return to the quiet safety of your home. The scariest shows are always on TV. from within house.

LONDON– The size of the crown has been changed. Troops prepare for the biggest military march in 70 years. The Golden State Coach is ready to go.

Now it’s show time.

King Charles III will be crowned on Saturday at Westminster Abbey in an event full of pomp that the UK is capable of.

Dressed clergymen will present medieval symbols of power – a rod, a scepter and an orb. Brass bands and soldiers in bear hats will march through the streets. And the new king and queen will apparently end the day on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave to the cheering crowd.

But don’t be too blind. Behind the pomp is the goal: to strengthen the foundations of the crown and show that the people of the United Kingdom continue to support their monarch.

Royal historian Robert Lacey likens the event to a U.S. presidential election and inauguration rolled into one — a celebration as well as a test of how the public perceives the new sovereign.

“Obviously the king is not subject to a vote, and so these big public rituals are the closest test for royals,” said Lacey, author of Brothers in Battle: William and Harry, the inside story of a family in turmoil.” “His main goal is to attract the loyalty and interest of the British to showcase this crowd outside Buckingham Palace waving on the balcony.”

But while TV screens around the world will be filled with flag-waving fans, Charles’s coronation comes at a difficult time for members of the royal family.

Opinion polls show that support for the monarchy has waned over time. The UK is engulfed in double-digit inflation that is eroding living standards and making some people question the cost of a coronation. And the royal family is riven by controversy as Charles’s youngest son, Prince Harry, lashes out from his base in Southern California.

More importantly, some members of an increasingly diverse British society want to reconsider the monarchy’s links to the trade in enslaved Africans and its role in the former British Empire that ruled much of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

Kehinde Andrews, professor of black studies at Birmingham City University, wonders if the people of Britain and the Empire’s successor, the Commonwealth, really want a 74-year-old white man to be their representative.

“If this isn’t the biggest celebration of white supremacy, I can’t think of what it is, especially when you think about lengths and pomp and jewelry and all that, right?” Andrews said of the coronation. “So if you’re really serious about saying, look, we want an anti-racist future, then there’s absolutely no place for this horrible institution.”

The king attempted to address some of these concerns by promising to open the royal archives to researchers studying the family’s links to slavery.

But the coronation will be a broader and more symbolic attempt to show that the monarchy still has a role to play.

The coronation of Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort, will include many elements of past coronations – hymns, prayers, anointing of oils – all designed to remind the world of the history, traditions and mysteries embodied in the monarchy.

But the festivities have been adapted to better reflect contemporary Britain, where about 18% of the population consider themselves to be part of an ethnic minority. This compares to less than 1% when Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, was crowned in 1953.

For the first time, religious leaders representing Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh traditions will play an active role in the ceremony. The music will include works written and performed by artists from each of the four UK countries and across the Commonwealth.

Symbolically, Charles would open the service face-to-face with the young chanter and promise to serve rather than serve him, and he abandoned the centuries-old tradition that the highest-ranking members of the aristocracy swore allegiance to him. Instead, parishioners and those watching at home will be asked to swear allegiance to the king.

The ceremony will also be shorter – about two hours instead of three.

“A coronation is something that different people celebrate together,” said interfaith leader Alia Azam, who will represent Muslims when religious leaders greet the king after his coronation. “I think it’s very important that unity overcomes differences, just as light overcomes darkness.”

Celius Toussaint and his wife Bridget will be watching. The couple celebrated Elizabeth’s coronation as children on the island of Dominica and moved to England in 1960 in search of work. A corner of their home in Preston, northwest England, is lined with royal photographs and souvenirs, including a jar of coronation shortbread.

Toussaint loves Charles’ efforts to protect the environment and is willing to put the end of his first marriage to the late Princess Diana behind him. He blames the government, not the monarchy, for the immigration crackdown unfairly directed against him and thousands of other Caribbean migrants in recent years.

“Perhaps, like all of us, he has his flaws… but he is forgiven,” Toussaint said. “I think he will do a good job and we really like him.”

The question is whether this devotion is passed on to the younger generation.

While support for the monarchy has waned over the past 30 years, it is much weaker among young people, according to polls by the polling firm Ipsos.

One of the strengths of the monarchy is that many see it as an advantage to have a neutral head of state in times of instability, said Kelly Beaver, the firm’s UK chief executive. With the UK grappling with multiple challenges from inflation to climate change to war in Ukraine, she said, there is “a real opportunity for the king to step up and show leadership.”

“And that’s why I think it really needs to be played for Charles.”

Unfortunately for the king, the coronation will also highlight the family dramas that have rocked the House of Windsor. Chief among them is Charles’ tense relationship with Harry and his wife Meghan, a biracial American who experts once thought would help the royal family connect with a multicultural Britain.

But those hopes were dashed when the couple stepped down from royal duties three years ago and moved to California. They have since voiced a number of grievances, including accusations that palace officials were indifferent to Meghan’s mental health issues as she adjusted to life as royalty, that the Windsors were guilty of an unconscious bias in their treatment of race, and that Camilla leaked unflattering stories about the couple to get more favorable coverage for herself.

After months of speculation about whether they would be invited to the coronation, the palace announced that Harry would attend, but Meghan would remain in California with her two children.

If the recent royal gatherings are any indication, attention will now turn to the distribution of seats within the abbey and whether Harry is talking to his father and Prince William, heir to the throne.

“Where Harry sits in relation to the rest of his family will no doubt make a big difference to the international media,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine. “But you know, Buckingham Palace and the organizers will be aware of that.” . and they will, I am sure, come up with the best possible solution under the circumstances.”

All of this – the history of the monarchy, changes in British society and even family drama – will be in the minds of people watching the unfolding coronation.

For Lacey, that’s how it should be. At some level, people will process all of these things when they decide whether to applaud them or stay away altogether, like voters on Election Day.

“One of the interesting things about the coronation and its symbolism is that it’s not just a celebration,” he said. “It gives the British an opportunity to look and think about what’s important to us.”