Wellington Paranormal

Quirkily funny and entertaining. 7/10

(Review updated after Season 4).

Officers Minogue and O'Leary are two uniformed members of the Wellington, New Zealand, police. Their work is largely uneventful until they encounter a girl who seems straight out of The Exorcist. Their team-leader, Sergeant Maaka, sets up a secret team to tackle paranormal phenomena. The team is the three of them.

Quirkily funny. Created by Taika Waititi (director of What We Do In the Shadows, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Boy and Thor: Ragnarock) and Jermaine Clement (of Flight Of The Conchords fame), this captures much of their signature understated, tongue-in-cheek humour.

Not brilliant though. What We Do In The Shadows was superb and I was expecting this to be effectively a TV series of that. However, Wellington Paranormal is less laugh-a-minute, less clever in many respects and feels a bit formulaic after a while. So, disappointing in a way, though I set the bar quite high.

After four seasons the quality is diminishing too. Season 4 is definitely weaker than previous seasons and much of the humour has been replaced with silliness. This generally involves Officer Parker who was always more irritating than amusing.

Season ratings: S1-3 7/10, S4 6/10.