After watching more than my share of television, I've come to the conclusion that there is something worse than a bad TV show:  A show that has the potential to be really good, but misses the mark by a wide margin.  With a bad show I watch a few episodes and then write it off as a waste of time.  Hope lives eternal in the human heart however, and I'll watch a show with an interesting premise week after week with the vain wish that it will start to improve.  Hex is such a show.  This British suspense program about a young girl who discovers that she has magic powers had a bit of atmosphere and could have been very entertaining.  Unfortunately the program is rife with flaws from multiple plot holes and a convoluted story that ultimately makes no sense.  To make matters worse, the DVD has a rather poor image quality which does nothing to help the poor story.

Cassie Hughes (Christina Cole) is the unpopular girl in her school.  She has gorgeous willowy blond hair with a beautiful face and perfect skin, the type of girl who has to beat the guys off with a stick.  None of the boys are interested in her though and she's described by the other students as "plain", presumably because she wears a frumpy gray sweater every once in a while.  In any case while the other girls in her class going out on dates and having sex, she's never asked out and has to spend nights with her lesbian roommate Thelma (Jemima Rooper). (Thelma is the only one who realizes that Cassie's a fox on wheels and has a crush on her, though it's not reciprocated by the straight Cassie.)  Things change when Cassie finds an old vase hidden behind some wainscoting in the old slave quarters (they apparently enslaved black people in England in the 1700's, at least according to this show.)  She cuts herself and a drop of blood falls into this vessel that was used for voodoo ceremonies (I guess they got they imported their slaves from the West Indies) and *Shazam* Cassie gets magical powers.

Cassie discovers that she can move things with her mind, but with this power comes some problems too.  A fallen angel, Azazeal (woodenly played by Michael Fassbender) starts pursuing Cassie for unknown reasons.  As the pilot ends, this villain kidnaps Thelma.  When Cassie finds her roommate, Azazeal tries to kill the young witch but Thelma throws herself in front of the blade meant for the woman she loves and is killed.  Don't feel too sorry for her however, because she doesn't go to the afterlife.  Instead she's trapped on Earth as a ghost.

Okay, a young woman with newly acquired magical powers who has to fight a demon from hell with the help of a lesbian ghost.  Sounds like it could be really good doesn't it?  It could be, but it isn't.  Defying all odds, the creators flub just about every aspect of this show.  The people involved in writing this show have no idea what they are doing.  There are so many flaws that it's hard to know where to begin.   One of the worst aspects is the convoluted plot.  The writers would contradict themselves and make the story take bizarre, nonsensical turns in almost every episode.  This even goes to the heart of the show; Cassie's magical powers.  The problem is they forget that she has them after the second episode or so.  After that, she never uses her newly gained abilities, even when she's being attacked by a monster.  Isn't that what the show is about???

The story behind her mostly nonexistent powers keeps changing too.  At first it's because she found this vase that's been hidden for hundreds of years, then it was in her genetic makeup, then they said that history has just been repeating itself over and over again for the past 500 years, and Cassie is just another in a long line of witches.  Pick and origin and stick with it guys.

What's even worse than the incomprehensible plot is the fact that there are no 'rules' to this show.  In most SF/horror shows there are some guide lines.  Vampires can't come out during the day, werewolves change at the sight of a full moon.  Things like that.  There are no such conventions with this series.  The writers just throw in whatever they can pull out of their asses.  Thelma is killed and comes back as a ghost, but when other people are murdered, they just die.  Why?  Thelma bemoans the fact time and time again that she can't touch Cassie, but then she has to open doors to go through them and even trips over a garbage can in a chase scene.  Sometimes people see a door opening or closing by itself when Thelma uses it, and other times she's moving things in the middle of class and no one notices.  Then there's the case of the witches.  They show several of them being killed through the ages.  Usually their bodies' just stay around but once the witch's body turns to dust and blew away.  Why did that happen just once?  The only explanation is the all too obvious reason that it was convenient to the plot.

Some of this could be overlooked if the characters were sympathetic or even just mildly likable, but they aren't.  Cassie treats her only friend, Thelma, like crap half of the time in order to be accepted by the popular people at school; a group of mean, vacuous, vain and vindictive people (and those are the good guys in the series).  Why she wants to spend time with jerks like that is a big mystery in itself.  In addition to that, every character acts like an idiot at some time through the series.  They betray their friends for personal gain, and generally act morally irreprehensible.  (I'm not talking about the frequent sex, alcohol abuse and drug use either.)  Who wants to watch a show where you're rooting for the hero to be killed?

There are many, many more plot holes, inconsistencies, forgotten stories (why was Ester locked in the room?) and examples of just plain bad writing, but listing them all would just be needlessly cruel and belabor the point.  In a nutshell:  this series sucks.

Having said that there is one grain of wheat amidst all of the chaff:  Jemima Rooper who plays Thelma.  She does a fantastic job.  Not only does she add a lot of levity to the show with her frequent quips and observations, but she's equally talented in the dramatic sections. She's easily the strongest actor in the show and can portray a world of emotion in a single look.  It's too bad that her ability can't overcome the horrid writing of this show.

These 10 episodes come on three DVDs in a pair of thinpacks which are housed in slipcase.  The DVD packaging is just as muddled as the show itself. The cover of the slipcase touts that these disc contain "The Complete First Season".  The first season was only 5 episodes long though. This release also contains the first half of the second season, which isn't mentioned.  Alert reader Jay G. e-mailed to say that when the show was cablecast on BBCAmerica, they grouped these 10 episodes together as "season one" and the remainder of the shows are going to be considered "season two". They will start to air in June. Even so, it's odd to package a show based on the way it was shown during re-runs.

To add to this strange labeling, the producers of the DVD split the pilot show into a pair of one-hour episodes. So there are really only nine episodes presented here.  While the pilot was split on the R4 release too(thanks again for the info Jay) I can't see why they would bother since it obviously works better as a single 2-hour movie.

Audio:

The stereo soundtrack was just average.  It isn't bad, but I was surprised that a show from 2004 didn't offer a 5.1 mix too.  There was limited use of the soundstage but the dynamic range was fine.  The dialog was easy enough to discern but it is disappointing that there are no subtitles.

Video:

The 1:1.78 widescreen anamorphic image was surprisingly mediocre.  The worst problem was that there is an incredible amount of digital noise.  The whole picture has mosquito noise throughout, it's like it was filmed with a thin gauze over the lens of the camera.  It's most noticeable in large patches of color, like the sky, but even people's faces jiggle and move like they have a life of their own.  Aside from that major flaw, the image is a bit soft though the colors are solid.  Overall a less than average presentation.

Extras:

There are a few extras included with this set.  Some short deleted scenes included for episodes 4, 5, and 6.  These are very minor; sometimes consist of nothing more than someone walking down a corridor.  In addition there is a making of featurette on disc one.  This runs 24 minutes and was filmed during the second season, so some of the shows that they talk about aren't included in this set.  There is a good amount of behind the scenes footage and candid talks with the cast.  It was more interesting and entertaining than the series itself.  This does give away some plot points, so it shouldn't be watched until you've seen all of the shows on this disc.

Final Thoughts:

Hex is a show that is so flawed that it is hard to believe.  The premise was good, and the pilot episode showed a lot of promise, but it goes swiftly down hill from there.  Filled with characters that are eminently unlikable and behave as if they only have one working neuron, the program also has an unnecessarily complex and nonsensical plot which has so many holes and inconsistencies that it quickly becomes uninteresting.  With a below par image and confusing packaging, this series is one that is best avoided.  Skip it.