Rant #1,420: Creepy Delights

I watch very little first-run TV nowadays.

I really can't find anything that I must watch, and anyway, the shows aren't being written for the interests of a nearly 58 year old guy, anyway, so why should they interest me in the first place?

I do watch some things on off-network TV, and two of the shows that my wife and I like just happen to be two of the creepiest shows I have ever seen on television.

The first is "Bates Motel" on the A&E Network.

I usually don't like reboots, but we tuned into this one originally out of curiosity--nothing more--but it has hooked us with clever writing, fine acting, good character development, and yes, some chills and thrills.

Taking the characters out of the original "Psycho" film, in this reboot, Norman Bates (Britisher Freddie Highmore) is a teenager who runs the Bates Motel with his mother (Vera Farmiga). Norman is still creepy, has a creepy relationship with his mother, comes from a creepy family featuring liars, murderers, molesters and the like, and he now also has a brother (Max Thieriot), whose very existence is clouded in mystery.

Anyway, the storyline is not California anymore, it is the Pacific Northwest, and that adds to the creeps the show gives the viewer, with the dreariness, the atmosphere and the almost constant rain.

There is a lot of backstory leading up to Norman's psychological duress, and that is basically what the series revolves around: how did Norman get the way he got?

There are plenty of side stories, like Norman's relationship with women--he draws them like flies, and he often swats them off like flies, too, if you get what I mean--the drug trade in the town, the weird townspeople, etc.

Certainly, this show will never be as good as the original film, but it does has its own chills to ponder.

The other show that we have just started to watch plays with history as much as the "Bates Motel" show plays with a classic film.

It is on Lifetime, and it is called "The Lizzie Borden Chronicles," and yes, it deals with famed ax murderer Lizzie Borden (or was she a famed ax murderer?), played to the hilt by Christina Ricci.

The pilot for the show was actually a Lifetime movie, but unlike most Lifetime films, it was as gory as an R-rated movie, showing how Lizzie (was it Lizzie?) murdered her parents.

Most of that movie was based on fact, and the show that follows the movie takes on her life after she was acquitted of committing these murders, takes some of the facts of her life, and twists and turns them in ways that makes Norman Bates' character look like a choir boy.

In this show, Lizzie is a serial killer. Yes, every episode, or at least what has been shown so far, shows her offing somebody who did her wrong, whether it was her own brother or a Broadway producer who tries to rape a prostitute Lizzie has reformed and taken off the street.

She does have some sympathy for the prostitute, who warded off the potential rapist by cutting into him with  a pitchfork. Rather than kill her--there are illusions to Lizzie's lesbianism, so she has some extra sympathy for women--she spares her ... by locking her up in a box.

Yes, this is fiction, but it does play with the facts of her life after her trial, and it does it in such a "fun" way--including using modern music in the background played with classic instruments like a banjo to set the scene--that you really cannot take your eyes off the screen.

Yes, these two shows are very, very adult shows, different takes on characters that have been well established over generations. Heck, Lizzie Borden was an actual person, while Norman Bates is supposedly based on someone who lived way back when and who was made into a household name in Alfred Hitchcock's classic film.

But surprisingly, at least to me, these shows are quite well done, and help pass their hours pretty quickly, but they are not for the squeamish.

I have never seen so much blood spilled on TV before, even on non-network TV.

So if you are looking for something different to watch, try these two shows out.

I don't think you will be disappointed.

Speak to you again on Monday.