© 2021 Starz Entertainment, LLC Credit: Kat Marcinowski
“Women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from depression. Symptoms include: sense of helplessness, insomnia, change in sex drive, hallucinations and feeling completely out of control. Women are also roughly twice as likely to be possessed by a demon. The symptoms are the same …”
So begins Shining Vale (premieres Sunday, March 6, at 10:20pm ET/PT on Starz), a brilliantly crafted comedy-kind-of-psychological-horror story about a dysfunctional family who escapes city life in favor of saving their family by moving to a quaint little town in the middle of nowhere. While their house is definitely an upgrade — and it should be, as they liquidated just about everything to afford the sprawling old mansion — no one clued them in on the terrible atrocities that actually took place there.
The series features an all-star cast that includes Courteney Cox, Greg Kinnear, Mira Sorvino, Judith Light, Sherilyn Fenn and Merrin Dungey. Cox stars as Patricia “Pat” Phelps, who’s convinced she’s either possessed or depressed (or maybe even both).
“I love to be scared and I love to laugh, and this is such a unique combination of these two things,” Cox says. “This genre I’ve never seen before. It deals with real-life issues — family, infidelity, mental illness, fill in the blanks. It was just so rich, and funny, and great.”
Pat is a former “wild child” who rose to fame by writing a raunchy, drug-and-alcohol-soaked women’s empowerment novel (aka lady porn). Now, 17 years later, she is under the gun by her publisher to deliver a follow-up novel or face paying back the advance she’s long since spent. She’s also juggling trying to save her marriage to her wood-chopping-obsessed husband Terry (he’s got reasons for the chopping!) and offer some normalcy for her oddball children Gaynor (Gus Birney) and Jake (Dylan Gage). Oh, and now that she’s clean and sober, she’s got a severe case of writer’s block. But that’s not her real problem.
Enter Rosemary (Sorvino). A glamorous ghost of sorts who’s equal parts creepy and naughty, who is either Pat’s alter ego, a split personality, her muse or a demon trying to possess her. Who knows, but she’s fabulous.
Being careful not to share too much, Sorvino explained her sharp-dressed character as someone only visible to Pat. “I may or may not have existed in the ’50s in the form of an unhappy housewife who dreams of the stage or the screen,” Sorvino laughs, during a Television Critics Association press panel on the series. “And I may be good or I may be naughty. And I try and enlist Courteney’s character on a series of somewhat self-oriented adventures so that I can live through her a little bit. … She’s kind of funny, can be sort of scary, but ultimately I also try and find the vulnerability in her, even though she might be doing some things that some might consider questionable.”
The eight-episode series is cocreated and executive produced by Jeff Astrof (who got his break as a writer on Friends and went on to write/develop countless comedies) and Sharon Horgan (writer of HBO’s Divorce and star of Catastrophe).
Can Rosemary help Pat get her groove back, or will she take her to the brink of insanity? Only time will tell, but we’re in for the ride — and all those jump scares and laughs along the way.