CREATORS
Daniel Cerone (The Blacklist, Motive, The Mentalist, Charmed) & David S. Goyer

CAST
Matt Ryan
Angélica Celaya
Charles Halford
Harold Perrineau

Premise: John Constantine a demon hunter and dabbling master of the occult, must struggle with his past sins while protecting the innocent from the converging supernatural threats that constantly break through to our world due to the “Rising Darkness”. Balancing his actions upon the line of good and evil, Constantine uses his skills and a supernatural scry map to journey across the nation to send these terrors back to their own world, all in the hope of redeeming his soul from eternal torment.

Review

My first big introduction to Constantine as a character was Keanu Reeve‘s version. As dark and brooding as the character was in the 2005 movie he didn’t have the skeaming conman thing that this version has. I like both but this one, led by Matt Ryan is a little more messed up, snarky, and rude and seems closer to the comic book character. He really embodies the witty bastard that you kind of want to hate but like.

This show pretty much had two pilot episodes in my opinion because they both kind of did the same thing. They’ve both introduced a potential partner/colleague for John. The way they introduced Zed Martin was smart, maybe smarter than the way Liv was introduced. Liv made Constantine look too much like a teacher, putting him in the background a bit like he wasn’t the titular character. The way Liv’s power seemed to be working would have made her seem to be the one leading the charge since she can locate the anomalies and see whole different worlds. Zed on the other hand came to him, with a sense of what she could do, although she doesn’t exactly master it yet. So there’s more room for her to learn which automatically puts her in a supporting role. It would have been nice if Liv came back, as a regular character, having learned a few tricks, it would create an interesting dynamic between the girls and Constantine.

As for the story, the procedural aspect reminds me of Supernatural (TV Series 2005-2020) – which itself was inspired by the Hellblazer comics-, with a monster/case of the week, both shows walked the same dark and mystic road but this one seems grittier and different enough to be its own thing. It’s more about redemption than revenge with Constantine struggling with his inner demons and ready to do anything to get the job done even throwing friends “under the bus.” The episodes are pretty fast-paced, there’s plenty of action, and scary monsters for this show to be a success yet it was canceled after one season.

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