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The biggest problem with most TV shows that begin with extremely promising episodes and then later start to suck is that half way through it becomes apparent to everyone watching that the writers methodically planned eight episodes in and then from that point on began to franticly create more plot because they had no ultimate end in mind. In retrospect shows that are solid all the way through are usually that way because its clear when viewing them that the writers of the show had a plot mapped out from the beginning.

There are two types of shows on TV today. Shows you can watch in random order and not be lost at all, police shows and sitcoms, and shows that have to be watched in order like a long movie. Serials.

The Fades, a show that aired last year on the BBC and BBC America is a prime example of what the latter should be and why as it finally grows up TV is a more complex medium for telling long form stories than film.

The Fades is about a high school student named Paul who starts seeing ghosts and having dreams showing the world after an apocalypse. He also starts developing a host of angelic theme powers. I know, not original.

Within the first fifteen minutes the revelation is made that the ghosts, which are known as fades, are for some reason now able to take on corporeal form which is apparently against the laws of the universe.

If you’ve been scornful of the British with there six episode seasons, the Fades is the reason you no longer should be because not one episode is wasted. From the revelation that the fades can take on corporeal form, the plot never stops moving; by the end of every episode something significant has happened. This is most apparent in the “previously on” segments which are in the form of a minute long monologue delivered by Paul’s best friend. In a show with normal pacing, this wouldn’t change for about three seasons, but by episode three, its having to cover so much ground that it does not resemble at all the monologue of episode II and so on.

The show is a mix of fantasy and horror, and those elements are handled well. There are many scenes of people creeping through dark and dank locations as monsters stalk them, there are lots of action sequences, lots of death, and the good thing is that the scenes that are supposed to be scary are actually scary rather than Buffy the Vampire Slayer scary. Namely not at all.

and unlike in an American show of this type where the main cast confronts danger fifty times and everyone’s fine, in this show people die in episode one and when you think they’ve killed a person off to show that maybe in episode five someone else might die they kill someone else you knew was now safe because there’d already been a death this episode, and that sets the tone for the entire season.

This is extremely gratifying because when someone gets in some kind of trouble the odds that they’ll survive it are about fifty fifty so you never zone out.

This show doesn’t really innovate in its basic plot elements but makes up for that because it plays off the expectations you have going in. Paul’s a geek who gets powers and has personal growth, his best friends a geek who thinks that its cool his best friend has powers, Paul’s sister is the cool chick who pretends he doesn’t exist, Paul has a crush on her popular but unfulfilled Asian friend, Paul’s mom is comically clueless like every TV mom, his therapist is profound, his life is absolute shit until the first episode when all of a sudden he starts making social strides, there are other people who can see the dead who tell Paul he’s important and is the person who can save the world and that he has to leave his normal life behind, but the reason this is compelling television is that the fades is like a show of this type that ran five seasons squeezed into one and what I realized after watching it is that the length made the writer, Jack Thorn, do wonderful things with pacing and plot structure that would only work with these time constraints.

Its the type of show where by episode three the steaks are high and shits gotten real, and by episode five things have kicked into the end game.

In some ways this is all so fast its a little disorientating, but if you think of the show like a Miniseries rather than a TV show it’ll feel less strange.

The fades also works because for the most part people act like people really would if the apocalypse began in there town. They run. It drives me crazy when there’s a show where all this supernatural stuff starts happening and it takes the residence of the town about four years to cop to it, but by episode three normal people have realized something’s up, and by episode four there’s almost no more secrecy.

The show is dark and works because it doesn’t promise to be dark in episode one but by episode three has broken that promise in favor of false tension. There aren’t plot teases where questions are raised, raised again, and then not answered, and the Fades also does not go waste time with crap that no one really cares about to fill time because it doesn’t have the time, so the things that happen episode by episode on this show are the same kind of things that are usually reserved for the season premiere or finale of a longer running show.  All plot points raised in the first five episodes are satisfactorily addressed in episode six. The fades being able to take corporeal form is the first sign of the apocalypse and the Fades quickly inspires a foe biblical feeling to the idea that the worlds going to end and the people trying to stop the world from ending have good enough acting chops to give the situation enough weight that by episode two the show has made the threat feel real.

The Fades also makes up for its cookie cutter plot with tone. The dreams some of the characters have of the apocalypse are truly desolating and give a wonderful feeling of hopelessness and ramp up the tension every time they happen because the writers really sell the idea that the odds of stopping the apocalypse are infitesimal and are getting worse every second. Because the fades becoming corporial is just the start of the plot.

Also the idea that some seventeen year old has crazy powers isn’t hand waved, when the other people with powers tell him, “hey, maybe high school isn’t so important,” they’re proven right on a daily basis and Paul’s determination to live a normal life in spite of the end of the world rapidly approaching, while made believable and understandable by the writers also makes him look like an idiot. People start out in a morally black and white framework but by episode three or so everyone’s compromising there ethics in response to valid changes in the situation and things are getting delightfully crazy. Its the type of show where characters don’t fit neatly into boxes and a guy you liked in episode one can become a dude you aren’t really sure about in episode II, and the teenagers act stupid because they’re teenagers and the people trying to stop the end of the world are deadly serious about it and the people with no powers who are caught in the middle don’t beat the hell out of ghosts with heretofore undiscovered kung fu fighting skills, they run and hide and run some more and get kidnapped and try and stay out of the way, and with the exception of Paul who is pretty heroic in the classical sense the rest of the cast react on a spectrum from moral to immoral true to who the show has shown us they are.

Its a rarity for shows to pull this off so well. Usually you have good guys and bad guys and not very many people in between, but with two exceptions everyone stays in the in between area.

The show balances its tone expertly. Just when you think its taking itself way too seriously moments of comic relief happen which are laugh out loud funny and then within fifteen seconds everything can get genuinely scary again.

The show proceeds to pull fewer punches in its storytelling with each episode.

You ever see a show where some dude goes through fifteen years of bad crap condensed down into a month but he’s more or less fine? The Fades doesn’t do that. Most of the first episode is spent with Paul in denial that he can see dead people, he thinks he’s going crazy, and even though everybody knows that he’ll eventually realize that he isn’t going crazy the Fades still handles this necessary aspect of story telling well. In fact it gets through with all the things we expect to happen by episode two. There’s a mentor, so obviously the hero is going to start taking lessons from him, the best friend likes the sister, the girl Paul likes has a crush on him as well,  Paul has a special destiny.

The good thing is that the show moves so fast that by episode four all the pieces are completely in place and all the things we know are going to happen because its a show about a kid who sees ghosts have either already happened or have gone down in some way we weren’t expecting, so all that has to happen in the second half of the short season is the story has to play out given all the rules and character relationships that have been set up so neatly already.

The cast of the show is British and I don’t know what it is but in British shows for some reason its much rarer that I find that ass hole actor who really can’t keep up with the rest of the actors on the show, and there are no such in the Fades. I haven’t heard of any of the central cast, but none of them pissed me off with bad acting, and most of them impressed me with lots of good acting, which is all I really want out of a cast. The ones who weren’t great were at least good enough that I never resented them for not acting as well as the standouts.

I’m not sure if the Fades is going to be renewed for a second season, and in a way I hope it isn’t renewed because what the Fades has done is told one story very well and has not in any significant way screwed itself with a bad episode or people acting out of character or a dumb plot twist. Its balanced a complicated plot with an evocative tone and has complimented this with a good cast.

The way the show jumps from mood to mood is reminiscent of firefly and probably hasn’t been done so well since then.

So go watch it already.