SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Wynonna Earp”

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

WYNONNA EARP:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel

Syfy has recently been trying to burnish its schlocky image with some more ambitious projects, most notably the time-travel thriller 12 Monkeys and The Magicians, a show with plenty of flaws but also lots of imagination.  The network’s economics, though, probably demand that a certain amount of the line-up be filled by cheap Canadian imports, and the latest is WYNONNA EARP, an undistinguished entry that doesn’t overcome its financial limitations with any of the gonzo spirit of a breakout import like Z Nation.

Created by Emily Andras (a Syfy Canadian vet, with stints on Lost Girl and Killjoys) from a graphic novel, Earp is, as its title implies, a neo-horror-western.  Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano), a descendant of the legendary lawman Wyatt, returns on her 27th birthday to her hometown of Purgatory for the funeral of her uncle.  Much as in Buffy, Sleepy Hollow and any number of these tales, Wynonna is marked as the Chosen One, who inherits her powers to kill demons at age 27.  Just like all the other–let’s call them Slayers, Wynonna resists her destiny at first, but before long she has to collect Wyatt’s iconic Peacemaker gun to rescue her sister Waverly (Dominique Provst-Chalkey), and by the end of the pilot, she’s signed on to the mysterious “black badge” branch of the US Marshal Service, under the command of Agent Dolls (Shamier Anderson).  (In the show’s one display of wit, it’s a joint US-Canadian task force.)

Scrofano is about all Wynonna Earp has going for it; she’s appealingly spunky, and gives Wynonna a wryly dark edge (as a child, Wynonna mistakenly killed her own father while trying to save him from demons, and she spent her youth institutionalized and getting into petty trouble).  The rest of the show is bland and familiar.  The demons, in particular, are sketched with no imagination at all–they’re basically bikers with glowing red eyes, except for the smooth Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), who will presumably be the season’s Big Bad.

As routinely directed by Paolo Barzman, the production values of the pilot don’t go beyond the utilitarian, with sparse special effects and flatly-lit sets.  Neither does Andras’s script, which sets out its exposition as baldly as its statements of character.  So far, the mythology isn’t particularly compelling either, as it appears the demons mostly just mill around when they’re not making periodic attacks and trying to get that magic gun from Wynonna.

The bar is very low for these Canadian productions, which have been renewed by Syfy in the past with minimal ratings and little discernible buzz.  Wynonna Earp may serve that need as well, but there’s no sign in its initial hour that it can lure mainstream viewers to its demonic prairie.