Channel Zero: Butcher's Block (2018)

Narratively, I do not know what to make of this show. It has absolutely no story worth trying to synopsize and I cannot see why it takes six long episodes to tell. Overall, it seems like a programme made for and by people suffering from phobic reactions, depression and anxiety. To that end, it’s highly effective: the nightmare imagery of cannibalism and filth, hallucination and mutilation is all very vivid and nasty but it goes on and on, repeating itself until the thrills are gone, replaced by (in my case) a weary desire to see the whole thing wrapped up and done. Elements from earlier seasons include a sense of placelessness or Nowhereville that suggests a decayed and abandoned America; unlikeable or unknowable characters placed in a rat-maze of surrealist ordeals, in which one magic door opens onto another creepy tableau or diorama; a big-name actor, in this case an uncommitted-looking Rutger Hauer; a sense of ritualistic premeditation which means some dread but no suspense. The details are visceral but the story is thin, dream-like, like a horrible dream forgotten in the moments after waking. I found it dull, ugly and fleeting but I’m prepared to accept that it may have been made with someone very different in mind.