CREATED BY: Dennis Heaton

STARRING: Jake Manley, Sarah Grey, Sam Trammell, Matt Frewer, Max Martini, Katherine Isabelle, Adam DiMarco, Matt Visser, Ajay Friese, Favour Onwuka, Jedidiah Goodacre, Sean Depner, Jewel Staite, Devery Jacobs, Aaron Hale, Christian Michael Cooper, Thomas Elms, Louriza Tronco, Ty Wood and Dylan Playfair

SYNOPSIS

Out to avenge his mother’s death, a college student pledges a secret order and lands in a war between werewolves and practitioners of dark magic.

The Order focuses on High School graduate Jack Morton, who obtains a scholarship to Belgrave University, though he and his grandfather Peter have an ulterior motive for attending there. Once there, Jack learns that there happens to be a secret society based on the college grounds, The Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose, beginning to uncover a secret world of magic and learns of an underground battle between The Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose and a secret society of werewolves known as the Knights Of Saint Christopher. Whilst caught up in his own motivations, Jack is torn between two societies and must choose one or the other.

The Order is a fantasy television series that hails from Dennis Heaton, who has been in the industry the last few decades writing for a dozen TV shows as well as being an executive producer on a few, mainly Call Me Fitz and Motive. Shot primarily at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, The Order is similar in vein to the likes of Teen Wolf and The Magician, combining the two together as Jack Morton enters the Belgrave University campus and soon learns of the two secret societies, one that is a magical cult (The Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose) and the other that is a werewolf faction (Knights Of Saint Christopher) that exist to prevent The Hermetic Order from becoming too powerful and restore order. Jack however has a clear motivation for looking to get into the Order of the Blue Rose and that is to take down Edward Coventry, the leader of The Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose…and his father.

Tonally, The Order feels reminiscent of being a tongue-in-cheek 90’s vibe teen horror show (think Buffy The Vampire Slayer) in that it doesn’t take itself to seriously at first, whilst having elements of Teen Wolf in terms of building a grander mythology over the course of the first season after introducing the audience to various characters over the first few episodes. The main issue the show has however is that it struggles to find its own voice until later in the second half of episodes and certain story arcs disappear without a trace for a few episodes (The overall grand master plan of grandfather Peter Morton and grandson Jack in particular), whilst others are introduced as one-offs but feel completely out of place (Hospital episode). It attempts to focus on trying to mix’n’match the mythology it’s creating with certain character moments and unfortunately the majority of the characters on paper are pretty weak. Lilith Bathory is a fine example of this. Her character for 80% of the show is angry, all attack/kill first, ask questions later mode and the dialogue that the actress (Devery Jacobs) has to handle is so repetitive that I can understand why certain viewers can find her off-putting. Even the main character Jack Morton (Jake Manley) can’t escape such writing as in the early episodes, he comes across as unlikable though they mellow him out from the halfway mark of the first season. The one I’m sure that will get the most stick however is the Alyssa Drake (Sarah Grey) character. Alyssa is just one of the most naive characters I’ve come across in a long-time, while she witnesses all the crazy things going on around her, even at points being hunted, tortured or close to being killed by her people, she almost has this Stockholm Syndrome-esque affinity towards the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose, like they are still good, regardless of what they have done in the past. Whilst the Randall (Adam DiMarco) character exists to provide laughs, he’s still the standout performer for me from the young cast involved in the first season. Out of the adult performers involved in The Order, I thought Max Martini made for a compelling villain as Edward Coventry, while with the limited time he has in the season I thought Matt Frewer provided the more impactful emotional moments when required.

While the show seems to finally hit its stride in the final few episodes and is pretty engaging as it balances out a few of its characters, the closing moments of the finale put a dampener and everything that came before for me. The series follows alot of cliches/tropes and it pulls one of the biggest ones in the closing stages to bring you back for a potential second season.

VERDICT

While the first season as a whole doesn’t interest me enough to have particularly interested in returning to view a second season, I can definitely see The Order finding an audience interested enough to campaign for it. It’s cliched, yet feels nostalgic to how the teen horror/fantasy genre was handled on television in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The characters are pretty two-dimensional yet the mythology can be interesting and they seem to find their stride both in the characters and writing towards the end of the season. Just a shame that the closing moments of the finale left a sour taste.  4/10