The Beginning, Collection One - Disc 1.

Episodes 1 - 9

Airdates: June 27 - July 7, 1966


THE PLOT

After growing up in a New York orphanage, young Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) receives a job offer from out of nowhere: Come to the small New England fishing town of Collinsport, and act as governess to the troubled young David Collins (David Henesy). The job is sound, the wage is fair, but Vicki has her own reasons for accepting the offer, hoping to find a link to her own unknown past.

She is not the only stranger on the train to Collinsport. Also arriving in town is Burke Devlin (Mitchell Ryan), a man with a past of his own. When Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds), brother of Collins matriarch Elizabeth Stoddard (Joan Bennett), hears that Burke is in town, he immediately flies into a panic, certain that Burke Devlin has come to destroy him!


THOUGHTS

"You make it sound like some old English novel!" Vicki protests when Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) urges her not to go up to Collinwood.

That line pretty much sums up the feel of early Dark Shadows. Long before it became a show about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and time travel, this was a soap opera inspired by Gothic romances - more Daphne Du Maurier than Bram Stoker. Those early episodes, long before the introduction of vampire Barnabas Collins, have been relegated to being a mere curiosity. But there is something to be said for the early series' slow build.


The Pilot Episode

The pilot episode is both superb and dreadful at the same time. It is a wonderfully-structured pilot, adroitly introducing the principle regulars and the three major plot arcs for the early part of the series. Pretty much everything that happens in the rest of Disc 1 is set up in this pilot: Victoria's search for her past, her difficult assignment with David, and Burke Devlin's return to town and unfinished business with the Collins family. The script even does a good job of tying all of those plot strands to Victoria's arrival in Collinsport.

On the other hand, the episode suffers from something that's par for the course for daytime television in any era: acting and dialogue that frequently ranges from poor to dreadful. All of the actors are at their worst here. Louis Edmonds is a particular offender, with his Roger Collins being so arch in the pilot (and to a lesser extent, the second episode) that his scenes veer into unintended comedy.


Cast & Characters

All of the performances settle down nicely as the disc rolls on and the actors find their characters. Moltke is a good choice for Victoria. She is extremely appealing, with enough humor to offset the potentially grating naivete required of the character. Edmonds quickly finds his feet - a good thing, since Roger's desperation carries most of the momentum on this disc.

Mitchell Ryan is probably the cast standout. Even in the pilot, he manages to convey an actual character around scenes that too often require him simply to be "gruff" and "mysterious." He also has notably more screen presence than most of his co-stars, and it is not hard to see how he went on to much better things in the '70's. Burke Devlin seems positioned to act as the catalyst for the early storylines, and the scenes revolving around his storyline carry far more interest at this point than the Victoria or David material.

Some of the best acting actually comes from some of the most peripheral characters. Mark Allen's Sam Evans is convincingly haunted, and has a blisteringly good scene opposite Louis Edmonds in Episode 7. George Mitchell and Frank Schofield, as the Collins manservant and the manager of the Collins fishing fleet, respectively, both convey an authenticity as New Englanders, and both make memorable impressions with limited screentime. Of the more major supporting cast, Nancy Barrett does a strong job of seeming genuine even when struggling with strained dialogue.


OVERALL

It's not great television, and I won't be reviewing it using the same standards I use for my Star Trek reviews, or even my Doctor Who ones. To review episodes of a 1960's soap that was practically shot as live using the same scale as prime-time television would not only be unfair, it would be frankly ridiculous.

Taken as what it is, however, and with the right amount of willingness to take some wooden acting and bad dialogue in stride and laugh at the archness of much of it, I have to admit that this is fun. Probably more fun than I expected it to be.

Next: Episodes 10 - 18

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