The Exorcist - 'Lupus in Fabula'

Evil One got mad Jenga game, yo.

There are a lot of supposed horror series out there that are actually urban fantasy or paranormal romance. The Exorcist is not one of those.

We open with Angela finding Casey talking in her sleep, but in a man's voice that warns her that her mother is watching. Angela films this, and Father Tomas uses the video as evidence to try to get permission for an exorcism. The Church, however, insists on therapy as a first step, despite the fact that no known mental illness results in centipedes nesting in your bed(1) and making crank calls to your mother, let alone empowering the sufferer with mad Jenga skillz and the ability to crack a shinbone at forty paces.

Meanwhile, Father Tomas comes home to find that Father Marcus has broken into his house and established himself as his difficult roommate, like The Odd Couple if the slobbish one was a disgraced former child exorcist squatter with boundary issues. He finds the letters from Tomas' childhood sweetheart and encourages him to break this off, as any secret shame, however objectively innocent, will be used against him by the demon. we also learn that Marcus was taken in by some mad sect of the church as a child and thrown into the exorcism game, which is why he's a mess who annotates his Bible and keeps a scrapbook of horrors.

"Goodnight Marcus, God bless. We'll most likely send you into a cellar to
exorcise a demon in the morning."

Marcus gets Angela to dose Casey with holy water, but Casey holds it down through dinner before vomiting green and centipedes down the toilet(2). Meanwhile, Marcus realises that there are other demons in town, many of them, possessing the homeless. He tries to exorcise one of them, but it turns out that he's lost his mojo and the demon notes that he was the one they all failed, until he lost Gabriel. Tomas goes to see his sweetie, Jenny, who hits on him, which makes him realise that Marcus may be right about this shame thing. So one of our priests has no faith and the other has too much shame. This is going to go well.

The possessees commit a series of home invasion homicides, harvesting organs from their victims, and Casey is visited by a kindly, paternal-looking guy whom no-one else can see, which suggests that the demon has got at her in the first place through the void left when her father's head injury (not Alzheimer's) left her without a strong father figure and her sister's accident deflected what was left of the family's attention from her.

(1) Do you have a problem with giant centipedes? This isn't your show.
(2) Seriously; centipedes. Also vomit.

The Exorcist - 'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee'

Casey (Hannah Kasulka), Kat (Brianne Howley), Henry (Alan Ruck) and Angela (Geena Davis) Rance; Brother Bennett (Kurt Egyiawan); Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera); and Father Marcus (Ben Daniels).

The Exorcist is the latest in a long line of movie-to-TV adaptations, some of which have been great and some of which haven't. On the basis of the series opener, 'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee', it could well be one of the former.

Points for nerve, opening with a direct homage to the movie.

Father Tomas is young, hip, and cares about his parishioners. He keeps in touch with a pre-priest girlfriend and looks after his sister's kid sometimes. Run, sister. Get away and take the kid with you. I suspect being priest adjacent will not be healthy. Because he is so approachable, he is approached by Angela Rance, whose daughter Kat was injured in a car accident and now seems changed, and whose husband suffers from what appears to be Alzheimer's or something similar. Angela believes that Kat's troubles are caused by a demon.

Well, Tomas knows his stuff and cautions her that demons are religious metaphors rather than actual infernal beings, but she is insistent, and soon after he begins to have dreams in which he sees a priest performing an exorcism in Mexico City; an exorcism that ultimately and tragically fails. That priest is Father Marcus, the kind of hard-drinking, chain-smoking exorcist who works without backup and will pull a gun on any Vatican City pen-pusher who wants to stop him doing his job. During a home visit, Henry tells Tomas, apparently out of nowhere, where to find Father Marcus in a retreat for troubled priests. Marcus is perturbed by the story that Tomas tells, and warns him that he is stepping into something huge, and that it is not God guiding him there but the darker power. If Tomas is smart, he'll get out while he can, and if this is God's sign to Marcus, he can do one.

Mean, motherfumur servant of God.

Naturally, Tomas doesn't leave it alone. He offers Angela his help, explaining that he believes that this is the purpose God has for him. Investigating a noise in the attic, he sees a rat slain by some invisible force, and is attacked by Kat's sister Casey, black eyed and creepy AF, although she instantly reverts to normal when Angela puts the lights on.

'And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee' is a cracking opener, with tension and horror and just the right balance of the mundane and the uncanny, as when an explanation of how demons aren't real is interrupted by a crow driving headlong though Father Tomas' window and bleeding strategically on his Bible. It's a little bit grim and more than usually short on humour for modern TV, and in places downright nasty, but the series overall is strong enough to justify the nastiness. We need to see the horrid aftermath of a failed exorcism to understand Marcus' reluctance to get involved in another one. It's a far cry from something like Hunters, which just wants to shock.