Review: The Shannara Chronicles

The Shannara Chronicles 

Season 1 Review

 

 This review may contain minor spoilers, but i will try to avoid any major ones.

 The story begins with An elven princess and a magical tree that imprisons demons or something. 

Wil Ohmsford (Austin Butler- Arrow), a half elf being given blue balls from his late father.

The blue balls are actually magical elf stones.

  Will meets Allanon (Manu Bennett - Spartacus, Arrow )

a human druid, and adventuring ensues as the group travel the land trying to imprison demons and avoiding those who would want to relieve Will of his blue balls.

 The scenery is fantastic and the eye-candy is delightful with some notable actors being; Aaron Jakubenko, Daniel MacPherson, Mattias Inwood and Marcus Vanco. 

 Having said all that, there are also some strong female characters or whatever.

 The show is definitely fantasy but there is a backdrop of sci-fi in that the story is set in the far future. Where humans have caused some kind of cataclysm and magic has resurfaced and diminished since then.

This history isn't really important to the story and its pretty much summed up, in my mind, by one scene where two of the main characters are riding past a rusted ute and one mentions in passing that he wonders what this stuff was all used for. Its just kind of there, it could just have easily been an ancient ruined fantasy civilization.

The fantasy races existing in our Earths far future seems to be a bit silly, its not really a major issue though. Some of the demons look cool but most just look like armored humans, which was a bit disappointing. There are a few races in this world and one, the gnomes are by far the most interesting.

I'm giving it 3 out of 5 because while the world isn't the most engaging, where that let me down the eye-candy kept me coming back for more. Long enough to actually enjoy the story, there isn't enough fantasy on television and i did enjoy this.