Truth Seekers Review: Simon Pegg And Nick Frost Are Surprisingly Serious For Halloween

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Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Truth Seekers, hitting Amazon Friday.

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Long-time comedy couple and are rarely far apart, but in new series they're closer than ever: It's the first TV show written by and starring the pair, and their first writing collaboration in nearly a decade, since geeky alien road-trip movie .
A ghost-hunting adventure out on Amazon Friday, co-written by Sick Note creators James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders, Truth Seekers is pumped full of homages to The Exorcist, The X-Files, Ghostbusters, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and more.

But like Paul, you find yourself waiting for Truth Seekers to reach its full potential. What starts as a comedy-horror with a surprisingly dark edge stretches into a roughly-sketched conspiracy, that lacks the reveals and paranoia of the duo's work with Edgar Wright in Hot Fuzz.

Pegg and Frost's scenes together are disappointingly limited: Frost plays reclusive YouTuber Gus, desperate for subscribers and approval of his ghost-hunting missions that have yet to feature actual ghosts.

Gus' boring day job as a broadband installer sees him report to Pegg's Dave, who's clearly hiding something behind a terrifically awful grey wig. "Connecting worlds," his company Smyle promises.

Frost and Samson Kayo as Gus and Elton.

Amazon

Along with a reluctant new millennial partner in Samson Kayo's Elton (surname: John), Gus trundles his van to different assignments, which fortunately for his YouTube career take place in haunted dwellings across the UK.

Frost has all the fun (and screen time) with the actual ghost-hunting, beckoning Elton's video camera closer as he rattles off the names of paranormal investigating equipment -- Electroplasmic Spectrometer, anyone?

Emma D'Arcy plays Astrid (not the zombie).

Amazon

Some of the phenomena Gus, Elton and Astrid (Emma D'Arcy) -- a mysterious, https://kraftzone.tk/w/index.php?title=Rajasthan_Upsets_Chennai_In_Indian_Premier_League '80s-overall-shorts-wearing girl who tags along -- encounter are notably gruesome and sinister. The opening scene features a burning woman in an oh-shit-this-is-actually-scary moment. But others tug the show's tone the other way, with schlockier costumes and scenarios, from figures in beaked masks and consciousnesses stuck in clanky old machines.

Goofy comments during suspenseful moments provide a few chuckles and Gus' clueless, ageing dad Richard (a runaway standout Malcom McDowell) is introduced with a visual gag that cleverly blends comedy and ghosts.


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But the tone never finds a smooth balance, with an added layer of darkness to the characters themselves. Astrid openly describes her past traumatic experiences with amusing innocence, while Gus deflects questions about his missing wife, hiding his loneliness.

Occasionally the half-hour installments feel short, the cliffhangers neither satisfy with a conclusion or leave you wanting more. While it's designed to be binged, the initial ghost-an-episode format leaves little time to scratch the surface of the clients and their hauntings before the overall mystery takes over.