#twanc

In a twilight city of sin on the borders of the Shadowfell, where the undead mingle freely with the living amidst a vibrant nightlife, three generations of a family of roguish private eyes get embroiled in the affairs of a nightclub dancer with ties to vampiric nobility, ghoulish mobsters, and insidious health cults.

DMd by Emily Axford, it’s a spooky fantasy noir with a party of absolute muppets at the helm. The Vantasmo clan of PI rogues is a New Jersey style bundle of belligerence and strained relationships and loudly expressed caring, and they’re both hilarious and oddly touching. You’ve got a tired widower of a mastermind grandpa, a slightly overeager divorced arcane trickster dad, and a complete little shit of a thief grandson. The mystery behind the case is genuinely interesting, as are the party’s … solutions to several problems. I also love how they tie off this case at the end of the four episodes, but there are enough hooks for further entanglements that you can easily imagine future cases for this family of nutjobs.

Some personal (and slightly spoilery) notes on finishing it:

Twanc is the perfect 1940s hardboiled detective story. Or film noir—the movies based on a lot of hardboiled novels. It includes all the elements you expect. I cannot stop marvelling at what Emily did with her party’s assistance. I just… I think she’s incredible and maybe doesn’t give herself enough credit for what she did.