
Welcome to an episode of “As the Wheel Turns…”
Look, I enjoy speculative fiction and I am quite skilled at suspending disbelief, but all the pretty wardrobe in the world is not going to convince me that Elizabeth Bathory, one of the most prolific serial killers in the history of murder, was a misunderstood romantic.
I get that showing the humanity of a monster makes them even more terrifying, but ruthless, perverse psycho-sexual sadists don’t suddenly go wholesale chop-happy on entire villages of peasant girls because some boy hurt their feelings. Nor can I believe that she would be as stiff as Julie Delpy, who seems so focused on delivering her lines in impeccable English that she forgets to act. The least the writers could’ve done would be to give her some Lecterian-style gallows humor. This is more like Lizzy: the Bathory Nobody Knew, brought to you by “Hallmark…because we can be edgy, too”. Stay tuned for an episode of Jeffrey Dahmer—the Musical!