Back for another season of supernatural dark comedy, Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear star in Shining Vale – streaming on Neon. It’s a must-see for fans of classic horror, modern comedy, and women behaving very badly, writes Amelia Berry
Have you been feeling low? Anxious? Trouble completing everyday tasks? Have you been experiencing black outs or short term memory loss? Maybe you’ve found yourself becoming increasingly irritable around family and loved ones? Yes? Well! Delete that therapy app. Cancel that doctor’s appointment. Do not confide in a trusted friend. What you’ve got is a textbook case of demonic possession.
Or at least, that’s the premise of hysterically thrilling comedy/horror series, Shining Vale. With the show now entering its second season, let’s get you back up to speed.
Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) is a novelist who has struggled for years to write the follow-up to her best-selling debut, “Cressida: Unbound”. Feeling smothered by her life as a housewife, she has a sordid affair with the handyman. In an attempt to save their marriage, her husband Terry (Greg Kinnear) decides to buy a decrepit mansion in Shining Vale, Connecticut and moves the family out to this tiny, sleepy town. Cool-girl teenage daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney from I’m Thinking of Ending Things) and awkward gamer son Jake (Dylan Gage from Pen15) are less than thrilled.
But that’s all just backstory. The real action kicks off when Pat starts to experience a sinister presence within the house. Seeing visions of the home’s previous occupant, Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), it isn’t long before Pat finds herself both heavily medicated and quite possibly possessed.
There are upsides—fantastic new retro 1950s look, supreme cooking and cleaning skills, finally making some headway on the second novel. But there are also downsides, largely related to how Rosemary murdered her whole family with an axe, before killing herself in the attic. But hey, it meant they got a great deal on the house.
Along the way there’s a VR ghost mystery, young love, Terry’s complicated feelings for his workmate, a woman gets impaled on a fence, and Laird (Parvesh Cheena from Outsourced and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) proves that bizarre comic relief characters can still be the best part of an already great show.
It’s all dripping with Stephen King-iness—the supernatural horror that hints at more worldly explanations, the small town packed with quirky characters, even the 1950s fixation. That all came to a head in a first season finale that winks, nudges, and whistles loudly at The Shining (literally “Here’s Pat!”), with Pat/Rosemary attempting to take out her whole family with an axe.
Happily, she doesn’t succeed. Less happily, she is forcibly taken into psychiatric care. As she’s strapped down and wheeled into the facility, she notices a photograph on the wall of the Phelps’ Shining Vale mansion, with a sign: “The Shining Vale Home for Hysterical Women. June 23rd, 1859”. And in the photograph stands a woman who looks surprisingly like Rosemary. [Dramatic sting!]
So, yes, there’s a lot of King. But the crucial difference between Shining Vale and, say, The Shining, is that this is a show that really understands and cares about women’s perspectives (no offence, Dolores Clairborne fans). Created by Jeff Astrof and Bad Sisters‘ Sharon Horgan, every episode of the show is directed by a woman.
The central possession plot-line explores dis/satisfaction with women’s roles in the home and family—the classic dilemma of the modern woman, balancing self-fulfilment and social expectations of femininity. But the juiciest drama in Shining Vale, along with some of its most heartbreaking and hilarious moments come from the mother-daughter relationships. Both between Pat and Gaynor, and between Pat and her mother Joan (Judith Light), who also was institutionalised while Pat was young.
With all the electroshock therapy and strained parental relationships, it may sound like Shining Vale is all spooks and gloom. But every bleak moment is offset by a raft of ridiculousness. Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear make a brilliant double act, with Cox abrasive and sweary and Kinnear looking as if you could blow him over with a light breeze.
“The show allows me to do very, very dark comedy,” Astrof told CBR. “I thought it would be funny that she’d have to kill her family, just to save herself. I’ve talked a lot about this with co-creator Sharon Horgan, the directors, and moms, there are these dark fantasies you have as a parent—that you would never do—when you get driven crazy by your kids. But if you knew you could take it back, and there were no consequences, would you do it? Not necessarily hit them with an ax and bury them… But I thought that was funny.”
Coming into season two, things are in pretty bad shape for the Phelps clan. After running out of insurance, Pat is discharged from her very midcentury psychiatric facility. She comes home to a family who are terrified of her, a house in complete disrepair, and dye-job in dire need of attention (the grey roots actually look great though, think about it Courteney!).
Things are even worse for Terry, who has just returned home from rehabilitation for his axe-butt head injury. He barely remembers anything about his family, or what happened, and all that’s really left is a deep instinctual fear of Pat. However, he does have a pretty handsome beard, and a funky new street-style look.
The kids are alright though! Jake has finally made some friends (from the mascot community), and while Gaynor is finding it hard to forgive her mother (what’s attempted murder between family!), she’s written a rousing cabaret folk number about the whole affair.
It’s looking like we’re set for a season of higher stakes, new faces, and a lot more Joan! What’s not to love? If you haven’t gotten on board with Shining Vale yet, then now is the perfect time. A must see for fans of classic horror, modern comedy, and women behaving very badly.
