Netflix Just Quietly Added the Worst Vampire Series of 2025
Skip the weakest entry in AMC’s Immortal Universe
AMC brought its adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire to Netflix in 2024, kicking off a deal to give the streaming service access to its interconnected Immortal Universe. The phenomenal show recently completed its third season – renamed The Vampire Lestat – and has been renewed for a fourth season. Netflix is also the home to the first two seasons of Mayfair Witches, a series about a neurosurgeon who discovers she’s part of an ancient line of witches. While Interview with the Vampire skillfully navigates time jumps across centuries, Mayfair Witches buckles under the weight of its generational tale. But its sexy story still landed it a third season, expected to release next year.
The third and weakest show in the Immortal Universe arrives on Netflix on Aug. 23, and while the premise sounds compelling, you’d be better off skipping it. Talamasca: The Secret Order is the one series that isn’t directly adapting Rice’s books, instead taking a deep dive into the secret society whose members play a part in both The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Much like the Watchers in Highlander and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Talamasca members study immortals, vampires, and witches. They also often have their own psychic abilities.
In an interview ahead of Talamasca’s premiere in October 2025, series creator John Lee Hancock said he wanted to pay tribute to the tense spy stories of John le Carré, which is why he set the show in London. Anyone who wants to watch six episodes that really evoke le Carré’s novels should check out a season of Slow Horses on Apple TV. Seasons of Talamasca and Slow Horses run the same length, but Talamasca feels so much longer since it lacks the clever twists and compelling characters that make for a good thriller.
Guy Anatole (Nicholas Denton) is a classic audience surrogate, a mindreader who uses his powers to secure a job at a high-powered law firm. That sounds like the setup for a cheesy but possibly fun network TV show, but Guy doesn’t even spend a day working that gig before he’s recruited to join the Talamasca to root out corruption in its London Motherhouse. For some reason, the firm is willing to hold his seat for him, which feels like the showrunners were hedging in case they wanted to do a second season set in New York.
The nature of London’s corruption seems extremely obvious. The vampire Jasper (William Fichter) is living in the penthouse meant for the Motherhouse leader, who he’s bribing with his own healing blood. Talamasca agents who object or try to oppose Jasper are torn apart by zombie-like creatures or transformed into monsters themselves. Jasper is in turn very transparent about his goals of bringing down the Talamasca by securing a lost repository of their knowledge, dubbed the 752 for the year the organization was founded. He pitches this idea to Guy, trying to convince him that the Talamasca are really the shady ones and he’s just a person with legitimate grievances and a basement filled with barely-trained bloodthirsty minions. The search for the 752 becomes a pretty conventional MacGuffin hunt leading up to a twist that doesn’t make much sense.
After recruiting Guy, New York Motherhouse leader Helen (Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern) spends most of the season researching her own past. Her sister was taken away by the Talamasca for some mysterious purpose while Helen, who has no discernible powers, was trained to be a spy. Beyond cultivating an inscrutable demeanor, she doesn’t seem to be especially good at her job. This all turns out to be a lot of setup for a season 1 cliffhanger that never pays off as the show was canceled.
Guy is about as bland as his name implies. He lacks much training and makes plenty of mistakes, but he doesn’t have the harried feeling of someone in over their head or even a lovable loser like the Slow Horses. Instead, he has the unearned swagger of a guy with natural talent who has found himself the center of attention. Most of the supporting characters are similarly thin. Hancock and his co-showrunner Mark Lafferty spend so much time keeping motives opaque that they don’t leave much room for personality to emerge.
The show’s brightest moments are all borrowed from Interview with the Vampire. Guy interrogates the interviewer-turned-vampire Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) at a book signing and goes on a wild adventure involving blood smuggling with Talamasca agent Raglan Jones (Justin Kirk). Guy feels out of his league in both scenes, trying to prove himself a worthy protagonist alongside far more compelling characters. AMC made the same mistake as Marvel and DC by stretching its shared universe too thin and relying on cameos to keep viewers interested. If you loved Interview with the Vampire, just skip Talamasca and wait until The Vampire Lestat hits Netflix instead.