前《捉鬼莎拉·Michelle Gellar returns to the realms of fantasy TV with “Wolf Pack,” a new Paramount+ series premiering Thursday, Jan. 26. Unfortunately, her quarter-century of accrued credibility battling bloodsuckers and other creatures of the night isn’t enough to make this feel like more than a mundane rehash of tired tropes we’ve seen before, and better.
The screen adaptation of Edovan Belkom’s popular 2002 YA novel (a very loose adaptation, it’s worth mentioning) has the former Buffy most prominently placed in its marketing, but she mostly flits in and out of the proceedings, with the show’s focus instead on a cast of newish faces navigating the onset of a very hairy problem. Foremost among those faces is high schooler Everett (Armani Jackson) who, along with fellow student Blake (Bella Shepard), survives an attack by a wild animal even as many of their classmates arekilled.
Before long, Everett is sporting washboard abs and Blake’s skin condition clears up. Ah, the upsides of lycanthropy!
All this is happening against the backdrop of wildfires that may or may not be the act of an arsonist. Into this investigation drops Kristin Ramsey (Gellar), who has some entirely reasonable questions for the wayward teenswho conveniently survived the blaze (and whose wolf bites are visible only to each other — so no good alibi there either).
Of course, you can’t have a pack with only two wolves, which is where siblings Luna and Harlan Briggs (Chloe Robinson, Tyler Gray) come in. We know their dad is involved in the fires somehow, and we know they’re werewolves, but we don’t know much else just yet. This is a show that’s long on portent and “something is coming” place-setting without the necessary exposition to keep the audience invested in what’s actually happening.
“Wolf Pack” is the latest werewolf project from producer Jeff Davis, who first cut his fanged teeth on MTV’s cult favorite series “Teen Wolf” (a new feature film continuation of which also premieres Thursday on Paramount+). The projects are unrelated, but it’s safe to assume “Wolf Pack” wouldn’t exist without “Teen Wolf,” and it’s also likely “Teen Wolf” wouldn’t have happened if not for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
As such, there’s a symmetry and appropriateness to bringing in Gellar, a beloved figure in this genre, to share some of her “certified icon” status. And while it’s likely her character will become more essential to the mix as things progress, she doesn’t get much of a showcase in the two episodes made available for review. Further, “Wolf Pack” thus far doesn’t do much to highlight what separates this project from other recent supernatural teen dramas (a非常long list at this point).
Indeed, while the producers have taken pains to say this is a separate story from “Teen Wolf,” its aesthetic can’t help but evoke it and feel derivative as a result. In a similar vein, it feels like “Wolf Pack” is trapped by a mythology it hasn’t even expanded on yet. It’s all too familiar to be treated like it’s something new.
The “Wolf Pack” books (there are four so far) have been popular for long enough that it’s easy to see why Paramount thought they could claw an entire series’ worth of driving interest out of the premise. But while they make a game effort of sprinkling some of their “Teen Wolf” magic over the proceedings, it falls flat so far. The debut season of “Wolf Pack” is set to span 10 episodes, and one wonders if there will be enough acclaim from fans of the books or the uninitiated to keep them coming back — or if they’ll prefer to let sleeping dogs lie.
K“Wolf Pack”:Drama series. Starring Armani Jackson, Bella Shepardand Sarah Michelle Gellar. (TV-14. Ten episodes.) Premieres Thursday, Jan. 26. Subsequent episodes released Thursdays through March 30.