Night Mares Season 1
- cepmurphywrites
- Apr 1
- 6 min read
By Paul Leone
In our world, this show does not exist - but in another world, you can find DVD boxsets right next to Aella the Amazon and The Van Helsing Mysteries...
It's all because of cosplay.
I should have started with Night Mares from day one. The premise – occult investigators in the Old West – is right up my alley, and Molly Quinn is one of my favorite cast members on Castle, so I would have been an easy sell. But for some reason, the show wasn't on my radar until the second season. And we're back to cosplay. One day I was browsing the forums at alternatehistory.com and I happened to wrong-click my way into the "Nice cosplay pictures thread" – there, in between an Emma Frost and the Halo guy were a pair of women in old west garb, one a gunslinger with a couple undone buttons on her blouse and the other a mousy frontier girl with round spectacles. Apparently, these were the Brophy Sisters. A couple of Google searches later and I knew what I wanted to watch while waiting for delivery that night.
Night Mares aired on AMC between 2017 and 2021 with a total of 36 episodes. The titular Night Mares were a secret sisterhood of occult investigators, in this case two Irish-American sisters living in San Francisco in the early 1870s. They delved into paranormal mysteries alongside their friends and allies, often butting heads with the sinister high-society forces of the Sphinx Club. The show drew inspiration from sources such as Stephen King, Manly Wade Wellman, Mike Mignola, and shows like Supernatural and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (another Weird Western program, but much, much lighter in tone than Night Mares).
The sisters in question, Anne and Maggie Brophy, were played by British actress Emily Beecham in her first major American television role and Molly C. Quinn (fresh off her breakout role on Castle). The rest of the main cast consisted of Lewis Tan as the gunslinger Tang Zidaan; Tania Raymonde as Sister Isabel Ramirez of the fictional Order of St. Victoria; Leighton Meester as Hannah Visser, wealthy socialite and hapless member of the Sphinx Club; Demore Barnes as King Brady, a mostly-friendly rival in the occult troubleshooting business; and Nick Frost as the prospector, brawler and drunkard Savage Sam Henderson.
While not quite rising to the level of prestige television, Night Mares is one of the better sci-fi/horror shows of the late 2010s, elevated by a great cast and generally smart scripts. It has a modest but devoted fanbase and, mercifully, ended in its own time instead of being prematurely cancelled or, perhaps even worse, staggering on for a few seasons past its sell-by date. Fans are divided on the overall plot about the Sphinx Club's obsessive hunt for Atlantean relics (hinted at once or twice in season 1 and becoming more and more prominent in the second and third seasons). Speaking only for myself, I think it is an interesting and (for the most part) well-written storyline, even if one does wonder what Atlantis is doing in California of all places.
Season one introduces the characters, both good and evil, and sets them off on their arcs while also laying down the rules of the setting (which the show does a very good job of adhering to over its run – the showrunners clearly learned from the mistakes of earlier programs we won't name and had both a plan and a setting bible before the first episode was filmed). The stakes are relatively low-key and most of the plots are solved by the end of a given episode, but as the season goes on, we learn more and more about the rot beneath the charming facade of the Sphinx Club until it all comes to a head.
The first season starts with a bang, literally, in the two-part episode "Once Upon a Time in the Weird West," as Anne and Zidaan dynamite a backwoods shack in order to flush out the vampire lurking inside it. We are then introduced to the other main characters and the central location, Zorzi's bar, complete with sultry, savvy owner Caterina Zorzi (Morena Baccarin) and her 'girls' Jenny (Leven Rambin) and Violet (Renee Olstead). The plot whisks almost everyone along on an adventure involving a haunted mansion outside the city. Part 2 spends most of the time exploring said haunted mansion, allowing the leads to showcase their skills (Anne's intuition, Maggie's book-learning, Zidaan's gunslinging, Sister Isabel's piety and King's keen perception); Lera Lynn, the vocalist for the opening credits, makes one of a handful of cameos back at Zorzi's with a poignant performance of "Lorena".
The third episode, "The Sphinx Club," focuses on Hannah, a wealthy young widow and fixture of San Francisco's social scene, as she joins the club and is presented with the first subtle clues that it is more sinister than just an exclusive playhouse for the rich and powerful. The leaders of the club, Thaddeus and Gloria Clarke (Terry O’Quinn and Rachel Nichols), are initially presented as vapid dilettantes, but the audience soon learns it’s just an act. The episode is also notable for the first of a handful of appearances by Ben Browder as real-life author and war veteran Ambrose Bierce (here depicted as a barely functional alcoholic and cynic after hinted-at past experiences with the paranormal).
The follow-up, "Haunting at High Noon," sees our heroes explore a ghost town with actual ghosts. It is Savage Sam's first spotlight episode, as he once lived in the town and had to come face-to-face with the literal ghosts of his past, and is also the first appearance of the Finnerty Spectacles, a Renaissance device that let the wearer see into the supernatural world and one of Anne Brophy’s prize possessions.
"The Mentor'' introduces Caoimhe McLarney (Orla Brady), Anne's estranged teacher, to the show as she helps the Brophies out in dealing with an especially nasty and not-entirely-human murderer. It also deepens the show's lore with the implied existence of many more Night Mares both in the States and the Old Country. (A popular fanfic sub-genre is ‘Night Mares, but in __’)
Next up is "Midnight in Massacre Canyon," a straightforward episode culminating in a shoot-em-up finale where Anne and Zidaan gun down a horde of zombies. The barely-there B story involves Maggie and Sister Isabel tracking down a stolen Catholic artifact, the Torch of St. Victoria.
In "The Blood Countess" we are introduced to both the vicious and seductive Elizabeth Bathory (Katja Herbers) and the Convent of St. Eudoxia, where Sister Isabel resides when not investigating the paranormal. Bathory has no motives beyond murderous hedonism (loosely based on the dubious legends of the real-life Bathory). The episode has an atypically high body count, as does the next one, "The Wolf of Mariposa County." This time, the principal source of carnage is a gang of werewolves who, fangs aside, would have been right at home in an episode of The A-Team. The B story introduces Zidaan's rebellious younger sister Jimsan (JuJu Chan), who has taught herself martial arts and, naturally, gotten into trouble with the local criminals because of her knight errantry.
The next episode, "Lights on Mount Shasta," is a lot lighter in tone. Hannah hires both Anne and King Brady to investigate the mysterious mountain’s mystery lights; meanwhile, Jenny seeks Zidaan and Sister Isabel's help on behalf of her brother Jacob, an independent prospector faced with an unearthly problem. In "Terror on the Train," Maggie and Sister Isabel spend the hour on a ritzy Pullman train from San Francisco to Utah, guest starring Florence Pugh as an East Coast ingénue who may not be quite as naïve as she appears.
In "All Soul's Eve," Maggie joins Sister Isabel in assisting Father Shanahan (Scott Foley) in the exorcism of a haunted house in the rich Pacific Heights neighborhood. Meanwhile, Anne and Zidaan investigate rumors of a subterranean cult and run into a pack of feral troglodytes near Tulare Lake.
The season comes to a head in "The Talon" where the Talon, Tim Poole (Max Martini), a cold-blooded killer and the Club's enforcer, arrives from back east. It also introduces the Atlantean plot that dominates the show going forward. Ancient California was apparently the westernmost territory of Atlantis, although this aspect of the lore is soon forgotten (the showrunners apparently realizing it did not fit comfortably with actual Native American history). In “The Talon” both the Brophies and the Sphinx Club are after an ancient tablet, a sort of Rosetta Stone for Atlantean. The B plot was a rare comedic turn for the show. Napoleon III and Eugénie appear in San Francisco as the former Emperor, seeking to improve his health, has come to California. Hannah hobnobs with them and accidentally gives offense several times, awkwardly ending the imperial interlude in the Bay Area. The borderline slapstick didn’t sit well with the show’s overall tone and dragged down an otherwise exciting episode.
Next time... THE MYSTERIES OF ATLANTIS!
Paul Leone is an author who, among other works, wrote the book In and Out of the Reich for Sea Lion.
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