The Strain is back. Brewed up by Guillermo del Toro, director of the movie Pan's Labyrinth (adapted from novels he co-wrote with Chuck Hogan) with Carlton Cuse (Lost) on-board, it is back for another barrage on the senses and the brain.
Season 2 starts Sunday (FX Canada, 10 p.m.) and summarizing it is a challenge. The first season could be synopsized as this: "A vampiric virus spreads through New York."
Of course, various forces fought against this virus. Some survived and many didn't. Certainly the monsters behind this vampiric virus survived, thrived and multiplied. Now, as the second season opens, it seems the human survivors are huddled down in New York, figuring out how to stay alive and, maybe, cook up a biological weapon that will off the vampire varmints.
The Strain is both ridiculous and ripe with meaning on multiple levels. It's cheesy, comic-book stuff. The monsters attack with tongue-like thingies shooting from their mouths and stab you before gobbling up your organs. It's gross, but as a viewer you get used to it.
What will keep you watching, even if your level of appreciation for grungy and sprawling fantasy material is low, is the obvious layer of societal dread about disease and the undercurrent of fear that an evil, master race of neo-Nazi villains is lurking under the surface of normal, civilized corporate society.
The force that has been unleashed, if I've got the complicated mythology straight, is the vampire race called the Strigoi, led by a really horrible critter called The Master.
Much of this is explained to us by the key character Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley, who is superb, as he was in Game of Thrones and Broadchurch). He's old, Jewish and has a deep knowledge of the evil that has now returned to the world. To the Strigoi boss he is known simply as The Jew. A good many references to the Holocaust are scattered throughout The Strain and that, in truth, is more scary than the scenes of monsters eating up ordinary people. The sense of dread is palpable.
In the first episode of this new season – it's not hard to catch up and get the drift of it – the most chilling moment is when The Master announces his powers are fading and calls upon his sidekick, who looks like a poster boy for Hitler Youth, to "bring in the children." Even the sidekick seems disturbed by what this means.
As things stand, the handsome and clever leader of the survivors, one Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), who used to work for the Centers for Disease Control, is trying to make things right. He's lost his wife to the monsters. He's left with a ragtag group of people who are trying desperately to form a small community. They josh and the jokes are sometimes terrible. There's sentimentality, which can make your teeth ache. There are action scenes that will make you jump out of your seat.
The Strain is the summer's most bizarre, addictive series, bewilderingly beguiling. Little wonder that Entertainment Weekly referred to it as "like Albert Camus's The Plague on pop-culture steroids."
There have been similarly themed TV dramas in recent years. But unlike, say, The Walking Dead, The Strain is reaching for something ridiculously grandiose, and sometimes touching it. Also, by the way, it is made in Toronto at vast expense and it is fascinating to see the city turned into a cesspit of doom, with gloomy monsters lurking everywhere. Enjoy that, too.
Also airing this weekend
Ray Donovan (Sunday, TMN, 9 p.m.) is back for a third season. What the moody Hollywood fixer (Liev Schreiber as Ray) faces now is a Hollywood mogul (Ian McShane) who wants to have Ray's services all to himself. The mogul's daughter (Katie Holmes) is also way-interested in him.
Masters of Sex (Sunday, TMN, 10 p.m.) is also back for a third season. It is now the 1960s and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) and Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen), now an official couple, are about to publish their seminal work, Human Sexual Response. And, of course, start the sexual revolution. More on this and Ray Donovan in the weeks to come.
All times ET. Check local listings.