In this episode we learn that when disco is too good, it can destroy houses.

Reksio goes mountain climbing!

First the knight crossdressed, now it's time for the princess.

I like the original Wicker Man. The one with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, and the jolly island denizens who just want to have themselves a nice bonfire on the cliffs overlooking the sea. I named my Animal Crossing island "Summerisle" because I like it so much. Heck, after that, one of my favourite horror movies is Midsommar. I dig the whole "this is a weird cult that wants to bring back The Old Ways" riff on folk horror. I dig it very much.

The Red King tries to riff off the Wicker Man, but mostly reduces it to the level of a story arc in EastEnders, only with masked cultists on a mythical island off the coast of Wales. I really wanted to like this show, not least because there are actors of colour in it. But... It just doesn't quite work. It's the writing, not the acting. These folks are doing the best they can with a script that yaws unsteadily between trying to be creepy folk horror, trying to be darkly comedic, and trying to be a police procedural with a central character study about a morally upright police officer (riffing off Woodward's character, clearly), but never quite manages to fire on all cylinders in any of those departments. It mostly seesaws all over the place, and then the more soap operatic elements in the story drag the whole thing down.

The stuff that's trying to be comedic undercuts the stuff that's trying to be creepy. The creepy stuff makes something of a mockery out of the procedural stuff - and I have seen other procedurals tackle creepy cults. It can be done. Just not like this. None of this felt convincing.

Let's just put it this way: in the final episode there's supposed to be this big, tense scene in which different characters make emotive moral arguments to a crowd, trying to sway them into making a crucial decision. But I was so bored I hit the fast forward button through most of the speeches, because I just didn't want to sit through those. And really, it's not the actors' fault, who were all doing their best to sell the big speeches. It's the writing. It's just not... The horror isn't horrific enough. The procedural stuff feels increasingly silly and unbelievable. The character arcs or character growth feels like the stuff of soap operas, rather than something that might match what the story is pushing wrt what it wants to be big, provocative, moral questions.

Mostly, I was either irritated or slightly disappointed. And I kept hoping it would get better. Otherwise I would have dropped it after an episode or two. Like I know some TV shows can be uneven. I felt that about Fallout - some episodes landed better with me than others. The ones that landed well were enough to keep me going through the ones I was less enraptured with. But this... It promises a lot, but ultimately doesn't deliver. If you are setting out to deliberately replay some of the Wicker Man's premise, including some of its character notes, then you are giving yourself a very strong predecessor against which your show will inevitably be judged.

Don't do that if you can't do justice to the comparison. Midsommar is a much better inheritor of the legacy of the Wicker Man. This... Isn't.