Filming wraps on the first episode of Joss Whedon’s The Nevers

Well, this is happening. After a string of cast announcements, it looks like HBO is ready to go into full hype mode for The Nevers, a new series from Joss Whedon, the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and the first two Avengers movies. The show, about “a gang of Victorian women who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies and a mission that might change the world,” sounds right up Whedon’s alley — kind of a Buffy period piece.

There’s also a very official-looking website dedicated to the show, so it looks like HBO is putting some real weight behind the project. According to the latest blog entry, filming on the premiere episode has wrapped.

Shooting on the premiere (which is not a pilot, FYI; HBO ordered a season of this show straight to series) took place in several locations throughout southeastern England, including the Historic Dockyard Chatham, Trinity Church Square and the Charterhouse London. Shooting wrapped on the Mall near Buckingham Palace. In other words, this show is going to be 18 kinds of British, if you couldn’t already tell from the presence of characters with names like Desirée Blodgett, Myrtle Haplisch and Primrose Chattoway.

The Nevers is one of a number of high-profile sci-fi and fantasy shows HBO is getting ready to roll out over the next couple of years. Closer in time, we have His Dark Materials and Watchmen. Then there’s Blood Moon, the Game of Thrones prequel series, in addition to stuff like Westworld, which is entering its third season. In the wake of Game of Thrones, pretty much every network and streaming service is readying this kind of programming, but HBO has more to prove than most, since Thrones inspired the genre gold rush in the first place.

Can The Nevers become a Thrones-sized hit? Well, no, probably not, because Thrones was a lightening-in-a-bottle situation not easily replicated. But it’s been a while since Whedon threw himself whole-heartedly into a TV project, and his rapid-fire style of dialogue generally works best when he’s writing for characters he created. At the least, we could have a beloved cult hit on our hands.

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