Joss Whedon’s The Nevers is coming to HBO in Spring 2021

Joss Whedon is returning to TV with The Nevers, a supernatural Victorian drama. The cast, at least, can’t stop complimenting the show.

After he created beloved TV shows like Buffy and the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, Joss Whedon went into the movies, bringing us the first two Avengers films. Now, he’s coming back to TV in a big way, as the showrunner of a new HBO series called The Nevers.

It sounds like something Joss Whedon would do: The Nevers revolves around a group of women in Victorian England “who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies, and a mission that might change the world.” The Buffy DNA is definitely in there.

Whedon hasn’t done TV in a while. Will audiences still be interested in what he has to offer? According to The Nevers star Denis O’Hare, who plays a villain named Dr. Edmund Hague, we’ll find out sometime next spring.

O’Hare revealed that info during an (French language) interview last month at this year’s Cannes International Series Festival. He also said that, on account of COVID-19 throwing production schedules for a loop, the first season might be released in two parts, with the first six coming out, and then a break, and then the rest.

That more-or-less tracks with what fellow cast member Nick Frost told Collider a few weeks back: “I don’t know how HBO are gonna drop it. I think COVID might have split a big season of 10 into two of five, but that literally changes all the time, so I don’t know.”

Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is playing Declan Orrun, aka The Beggar King, a criminal “perfectly happy to help [the main character] Amalia and her cause — and equally happy to sell them out.” For his part, he sounds thrilled for people to get a look at the show.

“I just finished my stuff like a month ago,” Frost said. “We started shooting in October 2019, and then I did like a week on it. And then that was kind of my stuff done. And then in January, we started to get a sniff of lockdown, and then they just shut down. So I didn’t do anything for a year. And so I picked up my scenes like a month ago and finished the season. It looks fucking crazy, it looks amazing. I think the script is fantastic. My character’s like a serial lunatic.”

"Joss is amazing — like as a person, not as a director. He’s really giving and generous of spirit and of time. But when he’s on set, he’s so driven and focused and mumbly. And a lot of the time it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not sure what you want!’ Especially when you’ve got a face mask on as well. It’s a kind of amazing way to work. But I love it. I love the character, and I think people are just gonna fucking love it. It’s complicated and it’s fresh."

Whedon directed all of the episodes the Frost was in, and Frost thinks he directed all of the episodes period. “[I]t just feels totally different,” Front continued. “I mean, even me with a broad kind of lexicon of knowledge of the supernatural and the genre, I was reading the scripts thinking, ‘Fucking hell, this is gonna be incredible.’”

I’m a fan of Whedon from his TV days, so I can feel myself getting excited for this. Let’s hope it delivers.

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h/t HBO The Nevers