The Blacklist Is TV’s Goriest Success Story

When James Spader replaced Steve Carrell on The Office, a once great show was rendered painful to watch (“a different energy“, as some more politely put it). Redemption, however, has come swiftly for Spader, who is now headlining The Blacklist, the most popular new show of this US season.

While recent US network dramas are largely out of favour with Australian viewers, The Blacklist stands out as a genuine hit for Channel Seven. The network’s other new import, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., is shedding viewers rapidly, but Spader’s program continues to post impressive numbers. Last Sunday, with Seven eager to hold a decisive overall win on the showpiece night of its X-Factor finale, they dumped their usual Sunday fare for a new Blacklist episode: it duly delivered 1.145 million viewers.

Impressively, the show is also the highest-rated time-shifted series on Australian television. The October 21 episode landed 1.234 million live metropolitan viewers, but added another 234,000 eyeballs over the next week, for a grand total of 1.468 million. They’re impressive figures for free-to-air Australian television in 2013, and it’s a remarkably similar story in the States, where the series is breaking DVR viewing records.

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Painfully popular

The Blacklist has raised eyeballs, though, for the gory, almost ghoulish level of violence it inflicts on its characters, and by default those watching. After comparing it to 24, The Silence Of The Lambs and Alias, The New Yorker’s esteemed critic Emily Nussbaum went as far as describing the show as “torture porn”.

Certainly what American network TV asks us to stomach has shifted. Although crime dramas such as CSI, SVU and the odious Criminal Minds franchise had previously inured us to the sight of grizzly murders and corpses, several shows have raised the bar. The opening episode of Kevin Bacon’s popular but ultimately unsatisfying comeback vehicle The Following featured a woman stabbing herself in the eye with an icepick (it ended up being a modest scene for the show). Likewise, the third season of American Horror Story, currently airing on Ten’s digital outpost Eleven, has to be seen to be believed.

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Meet the punching bags

The charming and, at times, almost camp Spader holds The Blacklist together. As the criminal ‘Red’ Reddington, he makes the show a strangely enjoyable and addictive romp. In the series’ first episode, Red showed up at FBI headquarters to turn himself in. Holding his own personal blacklist of bad guys, he ostensibly agreed to work with the agency to bring them down. He travels with his own cadre of personal security, and has organised an unusual agreement with authorities that allows him a sort of restricted freedom.

Alongside his penchant for fine dining and red wine, The Blacklist is best when Spader hams it up. “We’ve gotten off to a rocky start,” he recently said to an FBI agent. “You’ve killed two people!” the agent cried. “I’m not perfect,” he replied, dryly. The other characters don’t get so much comic relief.

Megan Boone plays Lizzie, the wide-eyed FBI agent Spader picked as his conduit (who also may be his daughter). Lizzie is a punching bag for the show’s writers. So far, she’s watched as her husband was violently stabbed and almost murdered, before learning that he himself may have committed murder. In the series’ second episode (and for the second week in a row), she was forced to stab somebody in the neck. It’s unclear how much more this show can punish her.

Diego Klattenhoff, who plays Brody’s former sidekick Mike on Homeland, is another Blacklist punching bag. Playing the FBI agent Ressler, he only enhances Spader’s charm. Ressler is impulsive, unthoughtful, and (naturally) a bad shot. He has taken several severe beatings and dished out the odd cathartic one of his own. That he can shake off about eight straight punches to the head without so much as a light concussion only illustrates how plausible the character is.

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The promise of gore to come

Last week’s episode began with a stabbing murder, and featured an up-close shot of a man sewing himself up, another man being shot from close range in the head, and another begging for his life as he was lowered into a shallow grave.

The fourth episode upped the stakes considerably, featuring a hotel room specifically designed by a man for killing and torture. Tarps and plastic sheets were methodically attached to the walls, Dexter-style, to protect the rooms from splatter. Of course, Lizzie eventually found herself in the man’s clutches, tied to a chair. “I was asked to make you suffer, I’m sorry,” he said, as he began to butcher her.

But maybe the most uncomfortable episode of The Blacklist so far aired a couple of weeks ago, when the focus was on a man who was physically unable to feel pain. Naturally, he inflicts ludicrous self-harm on himself. No, he cannot feel pain, but the producers are patently aware that while watching this man slice himself up, we sure could.

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The Blacklist airs on the Seven Network at 8:30pm on Mondays.

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Andrew Murfett is a Melbourne-born writer and editor based in Miami. He has written for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The West Australian, Faster Louder, Crikey, and AAP. You can read more musings at @amurfett