Producer: SyFy
Writer: Emily Andras
Director: Paolo Barzman
Featuring: Melanie Scofano, Shamer Anderson, Tim Rozon, Dominique Provost-Chakley,
Release Date: OUT NOW!

SyFy’s new comic book based Wynonna Earp has been touted as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Justified. If only.

Unlike those two extremely well-written series, famous for their smart and clever dialogue and well-thought out characters and stories, Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 1 Purgatory is blunt, tedious, melodramatic, unsubtle. It depends too much on egregious coincidence, continuously shoots holes in the plot and is one bar too many chocked full of stereotypical, flat characters.

After returning home to attend her uncle’s funeral, alcoholic hot bad girl (but curiously tattoo-free) Wynonna (Melanie Scofano) is attacked by demons. It’s her 27^th birthday because with it she gains Buffy-like power. Wynonna needs Wyatt Earp’s magical .45 long-barreled Colt pistols, which the demons also want, natch. Along the way we meet a litany of trite characters: the local asshole lawman, the intense gun-slinger, dim-witted cowboys and a crazy evil gang boss. In fact most of the cast from Mel Brooks’ western spoof, Blazing Saddles but without the humour.

What Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 1 Purgatory lacks in ideas it makes up for in gratuitous violence and cruelty, and missed opportunities. 150-year-old resurrected outlaws could have led to some interesting scenes about time displacement, but such ideas are ignored to make way for dull speeches about evil.

All style with little substance Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 1 Purgatory even fails in production values. The acting may be decent, but the special effects look cheesy and cheap and are actually distracting. The last round up could not come soon enough and if things do not improve dramatically – in all senses of the word – Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 1 Purgatory will be heading for the hills.

 

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker