August 1: "Nightvisiting" (Class)

Now this is more like it!

If the first episode of Class was largely setting everything up, and the second was good but a bit disjointed, then this episode is where they hit the ground running, firing on all cylinders.  "Nightvisiting" is a good balance of the character stuff and the "problem of the week" stuff.

This time around we focus primarily on Tanya; last week we learned that her dad had died, and this week it's the two-year anniversary of his death from a stroke.  Tanya is still broken up about it (or perhaps the anniversary has caused all her old feelings to resurface), which is why this week's monster has chosen to try and latch onto her.  This week it's a weird plant-like creature called the Lankin²⁷¹, which is here to feed on people's grief.  But fascinatingly, the Lankin can't just grab people and force them to give up their grief; instead, people have to reach out to the Lankin, to be willing to surrender their grief to them.  This means that the Lankin has to convince people to do so, which it does by presenting people with dead friends and relatives, offering them a form of closure.

Tanya talks to her "dad". ("Nightvisiting") ©BBC

Effectively, that means we get little character studies between Tanya and her deceased father Jasper, as well as (to a lesser extent) Miss Quill and her dead sister.  We learn who Tanya is and how much her father meant to her, and we learn that Miss Quill (or Andra'ath, as her sister calls her) doesn't like her sister very much.  Oh, and Ram sees Rachel again, because apparently the poor guy hasn't suffered enough -- but he books it out of there pretty fast (although that allows the show to have a very effective scare, as Rachel suddenly appears in April's Skype window due to the video lag).  But that also means that not only do we get insights into these characters, but also that we get to see just how manipulative the Lankin is.  It's fascinating, watching it try to say just the right things, freely admitting that it's not actually the dead come back to life (although it does suggest that it possesses the dead's souls) but nevertheless trying to convince people that it doesn't matter, that they can give over their grief to the Lankin -- although it leaves out the part that it will kill the person.

But because this isn't your typical swaggering alien invasion, "Nightvisiting" gets to be a much quieter piece, about characters talking to each other -- whether that's interactions with the Lankin, or Charlie's interactions with his boyfriend Matteusz, who's been kicked out of his parents' house.  And since this is geared toward teenagers/young adults, you'd better believe we get a sex scene -- tastefully done, mind, but still there.  But ultimately it's the two differing conversations with the Lankin -- Tanya's and Miss Quill's -- that hold the most interest.  Miss Quill is immediately distrustful and is largely playing for time, while Tanya seems actually interested in the Lankin's proposition, even if still hesitant.  It's a fascinating discussion that makes for compelling viewing.

I said last time that Class didn't really have a handle on how to actually deal with anything coming through the tear (and thank goodness the characters are back to calling it that this week too), but that was partly because it seemed like the sorts of things coming through were going to be largely beyond their capabilities.  The Lankin, by contrast, is a clever idea that the team clearly can deal with, and while the final solution is to drive a bus through the Lankin and sever its link to Tanya and her dad, it feels like a reasonable solution, rather than a skin-of-their-teeth save.

So in "Nightvisiting" we get a clever, intriguing monster that leads to a whole series of character studies and even some character growth (including Tanya letting go at the end and Ram starting to open up to the others), and most importantly the balance struck here is near perfect.  This is an excellent piece of television and an encouraging sign for the series.  I suspect this might end up being the high point of the run, but if the remaining episodes can even come close to this then they'll have a winning show on their hands.







²⁷¹ This appears to be a reference to the old ballad "Lamkin", about a sort of bogeyman who murders a mother and her son.  Some versions call it "Lankin", hence the name here.  It doesn't appear to be a parallel to the Shadow Kin from the first episode (so it's not actually the Lan Kin, as some sources have suggested).