‘Friends With Fangs’: How ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Became TV’s Funniest Show
On the side of the road in Toronto, just past Yorkville Village’s tony shopping thoroughfare, is Staten Island’s ugliest house. If you time it just right, you might be able to pass the dilapidated monstrosity as a coven of vampires are being flung through the air, bouncing off the house’s aging siding as they engage in violent combat with a coterie of demons, werewolves, and fellow bloodsuckers. This past year, if you were lucky, you might even have witnessed the most unusual, borderline-disturbing kickoff to a Pride Parade there’s ever been, taking place right there on that lawn.
It’s fitting that the outdoor set for the FX comedy What We Do in the Shadows—the decrepit Victorian structure where four vampires and a creepy doll inhabited by one of their ghosts live—is so mundanely just…there in the Canadian city. Now in its fifth season, with new episodes airing Thursdays, the Emmy-winning series follows the undead clan as they attempt to blend in with the New York City borough where they’ve lived for the past century. It’s a fool’s errand, considering the quartet’s raunchy, uninhibited instincts and their obtuse lack of self-awareness (not to mention that they are dressed like obvious vampires). Then again, these people are nothing if not fools—fools with supernatural powers.
Spun off from Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 film of the same name, What We Do in the Shadows is filmed as a The Office-style mockumentary, infusing the ordinariness of everyday life with the outrageousness of vampiric quirks.