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Series of Unfortunate Events review: Is season 2 a hit?

Photo credit: Joseph Lederer / Netflix
Photo credit: Joseph Lederer / Netflix

From Digital Spy

Beware! This review contains mild spoilers for season two of A Series of Unfortunate Events

A Series of Unfortunate Events is back and, while the fate of the Baudelaire orphans is looking as bleak as ever, this snappy dark comedy remains on top form.

'Top form'; a phrase which here means that the second series is as marvellously morbid as the first, with a host of new off-beat characters that Violet Baudelaire (Malina Weissman) and her siblings Klaus (Louis Hynes) and Sunny (Presley Smith) encounter on their quest to discover the cause of the fire that led to their parents' demise.

Last season saw the children run into the money-hungry Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris, in his element) at every turn. Having escaped Olaf's clutches when put into his care, they subsequently ran into his not-so-subtle disguises at the homes of their reptile-loving Uncle Montgomery, their safety conscious Aunt Josephine and at the Lucky Smells lumber mill where they were put to work.

The good news for fans is that, with the costumes for Stephano, Captain Sham and Shirley St. Ives discarded, Olaf's disguises grow more outlandish as the new season progresses. The bad news is that it never gets any less frustrating that no one but the Baudelaire children can see through his patent schemes.

Season two introduces us to the worlds of The Austere Academy, The Ersatz Elevator, The Vile Village and The Hostile Hospital, again devoting two episodes to each of Lemony Snicket's stories as we move through his series of macabre books. With the introduction of the Quagmire triplets – Isadora (Avi Lake) and Duncan (Dylan Kingwell), whose parents and brother Quigley perished in a familiarly mysterious fire at the end of last season – fragments of information seem to be falling into place for the Baudelaires.

Members of the secret organisation to which the Baudelaire orphans' and Quagmire triplets' parents belonged begin to rally to apprehend the villainous Olaf. The two halves of a spy glass seem to be key, together with the curious initials V.F.D. and a big leather-bound book named The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations.

As with last season, the show is wonderfully self-aware. While no time has passed between when we left the Baudelaires waiting at Prufrock Prepatory School and the new opening episode, Violet and Klaus give a nod to the time gap between seasons. "I feel like we've been sitting here for months," sighs Violet. "We've been waiting so long Sunny is starting to look less like a baby and more like a toddler," Klaus points out.

Photo credit: Eike Schroter / Netflix
Photo credit: Eike Schroter / Netflix

While our narrator Lemony Snicket (Patrick Warburton) continues to discourage his Netflix audience from watching this sorry tale, he also offers a nod to the show's format, describing the start of a new academic term at the boarding school as "a brand new season to explore the mysteries around you".

This is why we love A Series of Unfortunate Events; it's wry, it's wicked and everyone on the screen seem to either despise or pity you for watching. We feel rebellious, and a bit sick, just for tuning in.

The season plays out like creepy, choreographed clockwork, like the warped and upsetting lovechild of Wes Anderson and Tim Burton, with some exquisitely elaborate settings and costumes.

The show's sharp dialogue is equally finely tuned and the running grammatical gags continue, with Snicket offering definitions of expressions and idioms in his narration that are then echoed by the characters on screen. The show is as smart as Count Olaf thinks he is.

The new season introduces some exciting new characters, too. Kitana Turbull is brilliant as the truly horrible Carmelita Spats, a prissy popular school girl with more than a little of Veruca Salt about her.

Jacques Snicket (Nathan Fillon) and the librarian (Sara Rue), meanwhile, have a determination that could almost lead you to believe that hope is not lost. Small crumbs of comfort are scattered throughout the dismal events… but we know what's happened to those previously.

K. Todd Freeman continues to shine as the endearingly dim Mr. Poe whose hacking cough has endless comic mileage and Neil Patrick Harris is pitch-perfect, his bottomless talent and versatility lending itself to the role of a maniacal and over-enthusiastic amateur actor hell-bent on stealing the fortune of three innocent orphans.

Season two of A Series of Unfortunate Events is a quick-witted and brilliantly bonkers tale of love, resilience and the evil forces that aim to quash it. We should probably all heed the show's warning… but good luck looking away.

A Series of Unfortunate Events season 2 arrives Friday, March 30 on Netflix.


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