The Nevers TV review: Joss Whedon’s steampunk supernatural series is both thrilling and overstuffed

An expensive and splashy new series is bogged down in behind-the-scenes drama but there’s as much going on screen as there is off.

In the two years and eight months it took from The Nevers to go from a green light to broadcast, a lot changed in the world of its creator Joss Whedon, the man best known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Avengers.

In July 2018, when HBO announced it had ordered to series Whedon’s first regular TV gig since Dollhouse was cancelled in 2010, he was riding high off 20 years of lauded work.

Sure, he’d been tainted by accusations from his ex-wife of gaslighting and emotional abuse some months earlier, and the 2017 release of Justice League, which he took over after the exit of original director Zack Snyder, had been panned, but there was still appetite for whatever Whedon would do next.

What a difference two-and-a-half years and multiple accusations of workplace bullying makes.

Now, instead of The Nevers, which premieres on Monday on Binge*, sailing in as another part of Whedon’s mostly celebrated oeuvre, it becomes a matter of whether this Victorian-era fantasy series works in spite of Whedon – especially when his sensibilities are all over it.

So, yes, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes dramas on the inventive The Nevers, and despite many promising elements including its steampunk production design and layered world-building, there’s as much going on on-screen as there is off.

And that’s not always a good thing, especially when it likes to throw absolutely bonkers twists at the audience.

The Nevers was created by Joss Whedon.

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In the crowded world of The Nevers, a strange event led to the awakening or imbuing of supernatural powers in a group of mostly women and other marginalised people.

These powers – called “The Turn” in the series’ parlance – range from multilingualism and being really big to fireballs and levitating objects. It’s similar to the X-Men comics, a run of which Whedon wrote in the noughties.

The two leads of the show are Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) and her sidekick Penance Adair (Ann Skelly). Amalia is the leader of the group of the Touched (the name for those either afflicted or gifted, depending on perspective) that’s sought shelter in the orphanage she runs.

It’s not yet clear, in the four episodes made available in advance to media, whether Amalia’s mission is trying to keep her charges safe or whether she has a secret operation with a larger purpose.

The idea that there’s something else at play fits in with her “Turn”, which is she can involuntarily see flashes of the future – and possibly also super strength given her prowess in hand-to-hand combat.

Penance’s “Turn” of seeing how energy flows means she’s a whiz at technology, fashioning up proto-automobiles and listening devices. She’s like the Q to Amalia’s Bond.

Ann Skelly as inventor Penance Adair.

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Dollhouse alum Olivia Williams is the Touched’s rich benefactor while James Norton is having delicious fun as a rarely clothed toff running a bacchanalian club with his own cabal of the Touched.

Then there’s Ben Chaplin, playing a rough detective who likes a drink as much as he likes catching the bad guys. Nick Frost frequently pops up as the fearsome leader of low-level crims while Denis O’Hare is a doctor who’s doing wildly unethical experiments on the Touched.

Pip Torrens once again finds himself waxing lyrical about how the British Empire must endure as he has so sombrely done before in The Crown – and his character Lord Massen represents the iron-fisted status quo invested in making sure power stays in the hands of those, in his view, are most suited to it, white men.

And if they were all the main characters, you’d already be exhausted trying to diagram it out. But there are more, and more, and more – including Amalia’s collection of Touched, not unlike the merry band of “potential slayers” Buffy had amassed in the final season or even the Scooby Gang.

There is so much going on in The Nevers, including about four or five factions of enemies, such as Amy Manson’s Maladie, a character that’s, so far, little more than a crazy woman trope we could all do less with.

The Nevers’ production design is top notch.

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With that many threats to keep track of, and betrayals, revelations and twists, The Nevers gets lost in its own ambitions.

The series is at times jubilant and thrilling with its commitment to the lyricism of its dialogue and centring the story on a group of persecuted underdogs led by a strong but flawed woman.

But then five minutes later, it’s not so much scrappy as it is a confusing mess giving the impression there is no possible way it will all cohere by the season’s end. Or the camera unnecessarily lingers on Amalia’s heaving bosom, undercutting the moment’s message of female empowerment.

The Nevers has a lot going for it but it’s a distillation of Whedon’s best and worst filmmaking impulses. It needs someone with a more disciplined eye to cut half of its many dangling threads and subplots.

The Nevers is entertaining but overstuffed.

That person may be British screenwriter Philippa Goslett, who has taken over as showrunner for at least the second half of season one after Whedon’s departure from the series in the fallout of a Warner Bros investigation into his alleged bad behaviour on the set of Justice League.

Only six episodes were in the can before Whedon’s exit and the series took a break also in part due to the pandemic.

It’ll be intriguing to see whether Goslett’s overseer involvement will alter the tone or path of The Nevers, even though many of the same writers, including Whedon stablemates Jane Espenson and Doug Petrie, are expected to stay on.

If she can make some smart choices, then The Nevers has the potential to be cracker entertainment without being bogged down.

The Nevers premieres on Binge on Monday, April 12

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