This is sort of a long time coming and probably one of a million reviews of this since it’s been out for maybe more than a year now. I don’t know, but I’m not the kind of person to see some new thing and just band wagon jump. I sort of just watch and wait and stew and then eventually when no one is looking I’ll skulk in and watch it. Surprisingly I actually overall thought this was ok, it was watchable. It wasn’t as terrible as I surmised it to be. I think it had some potential, so it’s sort of a shame it was cancelled but admittedly it deserved it.

The casting was ok for the most part, the guy they got to play Constanstine was ok, he looked the part but his accent was all over the place. I mean what the fuck was that? I think he was sort of a bad actor too, I mean it’s usually good when you can tell an actor is enjoying the role he’s playing. It usually adds something like with the awesome portrayal of Negan by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, adding another layer to an actually pretty bland character in the comic. In the comic, I actually prefer the governor, Negan is a little silly in my opinion. But here the actor playing Constantine seems to have a boner for Constantine and it just comes off as an annoying smugness, he’s enjoying this too much, he’s having more fun than the audience.

The rest of the casting is lame, making Chaz an american was lazy and as usual the female character is only really there to drive the plot for reasons and has no real personality that isn’t just super daddy issues. The guy from lost playing the angel was genric.

Richie was good but considering he’s in like one comic that’s not an amazing addition. There wasn’t much I recognised from the comics except one episode about a hunger demon which was actually ok. But the rest of the plot is just generic Supernatural rip off freak of the week bullshit. Just some intern googling ‘Supernatural shit’ and trying to spin it into an hour long episode by mashing in storyline from murder she wrote. Just lazy writing 101. Something I forgave supernatural for because I liked the characters and there was overarching plot sprinkled in which is not the case for Constantine.

I mean I love Constantine, the one from the comics, which is not this twat. Don’t get me wrong my problem was Constantine in the show is not nearly cunty enough. This Constantine actually looks for cases to solve and stuff to do and help people, the one from the comic just stumbles into shit on happenstance and solves the problems usually out of his own curiosity or to save his own ass. It just feels like they’re trying to square-peg a round hole, turning an anti-hero into a hero because of ‘plot’.

Oh and did I mention over-arching plot, quick tip to the writers of Constantine; mentioning you have an over-arching plot every episode does not mean you have an over-arching plot. In the same way pointing at yourself and screaming you’re a pelican doesn’t make it so.

To have an overarching plot you actually need to have events that link to eachother and become a story, a mystery slowly unravelling, not just a bunch of unconnected shit you artificially connect with the code phrase ‘Coming darkness’ or ‘Rising darkness’ or whatever the fuck it was. It’s lazy and just bad and you should feel bad.

Essentially the problem here might not be the acting or the writing but the structure of the story telling. They’re trying to fit this huge collection of stories into this cookie cutter format that’s been done to death and a lot better. It’s the same thing in my Lucifer review, it uses a cookie cutter ‘Oh look a random event has occured now lets use my gimmick to solve it’ like how the mentalist is a fake psychic or how Monk has asbergers or whatever, the difference is those shows have likeable characters you give a shit about and an over-arching plot that actually exists and is worth munching obvious filler bullshit to see.

So overall, it needed to be cancelled as I think most comic book tv shows do because it’s just hacky pandering crap most of the time with lashings of useless filler. But it’s sad because it wasn’t all that bad, it was watchable and didn’t butcher the source material (unlike Preacher) and maybe it could have done better given another season. But I guess the character and the comic was a bit too niche for modern audiences drunk on walking dead and super hero bullshit who were already tired of ten plus fucking seasons of supernatural to watch another one without Sam and Dean.

I think it had the spark of something but it failed to make it off the ground, stick to writing COD games Goyer.