The Cutprice Guignol

Hoo-fucking-rah! American Horror Story has returned, and not a damn minute too soon. This genius series from the makers of Glee has smashed it’s way back onto my TV screen with the third series, Coven, following the jolly larks of a group of young witches.

The Worst Witch it ain’t; the opening scene (featuring an electric Kathy Bates playing her best psycho since Misery) jumps straight into the dark side of the show, with viscous torture and a rather clumsy handling of the RACE ISSUE in 1870s New Orleans. After that, the episode starts smacking us around the face introducing it’s familiar actors playing new roles; Taissa Farmiga as a young witch whose power causes her unfortunate lovers to die while bleeding profusely from every facial orifice, Sarah Paulson as the head of the secretive academy that protects the dwindling number of the supernatrually blessed, Lily Rabe as a fresh-faced witch from the Deep South whose burned alive for her powers, and Frances Conroy as an eccentric grandmother (“I’m simply mad for tartan!”).

Bitchcraft really acts as a world-building episode; we meet the other students at Paulson’s Magic nursery (Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sibide, etc), and learn the place these people hold in society. While most are forced into hiding their powers (“I’M A HUMAN VOODOO DOLL!”), there are some who embrace them, exploit them and live through them.

One of this number is Jessica Lange. It’s difficult to explain how I feel about Lange without being reduced to guttural howls of delight, but suffice to say she once again dominates every second of her screentime. The first shot of her character-a heeled foot stepping out of a car, followed by a crane shot where we can only see her umbrella and her arching shadow-defines it perfectly. She’s sexy, self-assured, darkly hilarious and oozes the sort of charisma Clooney can only dream of. How this show has hung onto her I’ll never know; but I am so glad they did.

Back the episode. Once again, AHS seems to be setting itself for another series full of utterly spectacular female characters. One of the running themes of Coven’s predecessors was the complete lack of women as victims-almost every single wronged woman has taken her fate into her own hands and come out on top. Bitchcraft has a few instances of this; for example, Roberts’ pouty movie star is gang raped at a party (in a scene which could have been horrendously crass and upsetting, but was handled subtley and allowed Emma her dignity). Afterwards, the perpetrators flee onto a bus to make there escape and, as a distraught Farmiga looks on, Roberts’ simply steps into frame and waves her hand at the bus, causing it to flip over and kill almost everyone on board. Later, Farmiga’s Zoe uses her special Jedi skills to rape one of the surviving boys to death in hospital. When Lange is refused a substance meant to restore her youth, she simply sucks the life out of the offending scientist. Whatever you think of what they’re doing-and it’s often violent, frightening, or downright horrific-these are a bunch of women you do not fuck with. And I can get behind that for this series.

Jessica Lange Line Reading of the Week: During an argument with Sarah Paulson (also her daughter, by the way), she delivers a shudderingly caustic “Don’t make me drop a house on you”.