There’s something amiss in the town of Whittock, the small island town where Yaga is set. This is where Charlie Rapp (Noah Reid, The Vampire Lestat), a private investigator/fixer, finds himself after Henry Park, the son of his wealthy clients, goes missing.
The fact that Henry is played by Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams is one reason that Yaga will undoubtedly attract a great deal of attention, but there are two rejoinders to this: 1) even though Williams plays two characters on the series (he’s also Logan, Henry’s best friend and doppelgänger), the rising star is barely a supporting character and 2) there are plenty of other reasons to watch Yaga.
Chief among them is genre icon Carrie-Anne Moss as anthropology instructor and overall MILF, Katherine Hargrove. With her shock of sexily unkempt hair, her bohemian vibe, and her tendency to flirt aggressively with Rapp, while verbally sparring with his partner, Clark Backo’s Carson, Moss is a legitimate sight to behold whenever she’s on screen.
It doesn’t hurt that Whittock is a town filled with all kinds of notable personalities and mysteries. Surrounded by water and woods, its primarily female citizens – ranging from Angel, the tattooed motel clerk (Emilija Baranac) to restaurateur Gina (Canadian royalty Megan Follows) to underage coffee barista Lily (Georgia Acken) to Henry’s bitter ex, Pam (Ezra Franky) – are all unrelentingly horny and prone to keeping secrets.
Sex and seduction are a huge part of the eight-episode series, which has been adapted by showrunner Kat Sandler from her play of the same name. The search for Henry, the debonair playboy heir to a small fortune, is the jumping-off point, but the series quickly contracts to include plenty of other revelations. Chief among them is the suggestion that there is a witch, or a cult of witches, who are practising sabbaths in the woods outside of town and encouraging locals to manifest their dreams via sacrifices. Potent hallucinogenics and trippy hallucinations, three-pronged symbols hidden under beds and carved into trees, and lots of poultry imagery pervade the series.
Anchoring the proceedings is Reid, who plays Rapp as a cavalier, carefree outsider. He’s as prone to yelling at a witness as he is at bedding down with them (he gets laid in nearly every episode), much to the chagrin of his reluctant partner, Carson. Their dynamic is the bedrock of most of the 30-minute episodes, which uniformly open with sultry voice-over from Baba Yaga and end on a revelatory cliffhanger. This is most notable in episode two when a nude, castrated body washes up on the rocky shore.
Between this attack, Rapp’s propensity to fuck every female character of age, and Yaga’s musings, there’s an undercurrent of female rage underpinning the whole series. In this capacity, Yaga echoes contemporary interpretations of the witch as a female healer who is misunderstood, feared, and targeted by men. As the series barrels towards its conclusion, later episodes blatantly interrogate the intersection of class, gender, and sex. It ain’t subtle, but the show negotiates its tone well enough that it works.
Audiences also have to accept some fairly distinct tonal shifts because the series is often surprisingly funny and, at times, irreverent. Yaga negotiates this reasonably well and, importantly, maintains its own independent identity from another notably oddball murder mystery series: Twin Peaks.
Considering its ties to traditional Baba Yaga folklore (not like in the John Wick movies, though the series is self-aware enough that this becomes a recurring joke among several characters), the fact that each episode opens with a Russian rendition of a familiar pop song (“California Dreaming“, “I Will Survive“, “These Boots Were Made For Walking“, etc.) feels like an inspired touch.
Aiding the proceedings is the inclusion of top-tier Canadian talent. In addition to Reid and Moss, there are meaty supporting roles by the aforementioned Fellows, as well as Sheila McCarthy as Olena Yaha, an elderly woman with dementia who provides plenty of Baba Yaga exposition. There’s another notable Canuck actress whose appearance in the penultimate episode will undoubtedly elicit plenty of excitement from genre fans.
Yaga is compulsively watchable and, with such short episodes, highly bingeable. Loaded with enough bizarre cult-like imagery and captivating performances, there’s plenty to recommend. If there is one significant drawback, it would be that Rapp and Carson’s temperaments tend to shift too quickly to be believable. This becomes more apparent in the back half of the series, and tends to feel like a narrative construct to induce needless character friction.
So yes, come to Yaga for a double dose of Williams, who acquits himself nicely in a mostly distinct dual performance. Just know that you’ll be staying for the hot, sexy antics and Moss’ “Boner Beast” professor.
Yaga premieres on Crave in Canada and AMC+ in the US with the first two episodes on October 23.
