TV review: WandaVision
Break out the pin board, red string and wild theories - WandaVision is a televisual escape room for mystery lovers.
Aside from being the welcome return of Marvel content after the pandemic-enforced gap year, the show is also a left-field venture that will confound those only expecting action-adventure.
This is a return of the clue-laden mystery serial, the likes of which we haven't seen since Lost's heyday in the late 2000s.
It's a mix of that seminal series Legion, Pleasantville, Life On Mars and the many odd town shows that came after Twin Peaks.
By the time Disney+ launches here next Tuesday, seven of the nine episodes would have gone out, so it has been nigh on impossible to avoid spoilers - unless you've been lucky enough to find a cave to hide in.
On the face of it, WandaVision is a series of faithful recreations of mid-century US sitcoms. The scripts are indistinguishable - full of very gentle gags, contrived set-ups and laugh tracks - all while skirting around the elephant breaching their world's fourth wall.
Now, Vision (Paul Bettany) did not make it out of 2018's Avengers: Infinity War.
Yet here they are, him and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) blissfully together in a neatly manicured suburbia - no clue how they arrived there, when their anniversary is or what Vision does at work. But these questions are brushed off with a happy sitcom shrug and a smile - most of the time.
Olsen and Bettany seem to relish their sitcom personas. Their tipsy magic act in the second episode is great fun.
But the biggest question with any mystery tale is: Can the big reveal stick the landing?
SCORE:4/5
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WandaVision
SERIES: WandaVision
STARRING: Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris
DIRECTOR: Matt Shakman
THE SKINNY: Marvel superheroes Wanda Maximoff (Olsen) and Vision (Bettany) move into a new home in the idyllic 1950s suburbia of Westview, but all is not what it seems.
SHOWING: Premieres Tuesday on Disney+
4 stars
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