Into the Badlands: Season 3

The Widow and Madam Chau are engaged in a bloody war to finally determine who will control the Badlands. Sunny is living free in the wilderness beyond with his son, Henry. When Henry falls ill, Sunny is forced to reunite with his old allies to seek out a way of saving him. But Bajie's distress signal has attracted the wrong sort of attention, and an army of warriors imbued with the dark power invades the Badlands...

Into the Badlands may be the best-kept genre secret on television from the last few years. A post-apocalyptic fantasy inspired by the best of Hong Kong action cinema, it's not quite like anything else on air. It's a frenetic martial arts epic and now, unfortunately, it is over.

It goes out in style though. The third and final season is a chunky sixteen episodes in length and depicts a much broader, more epic story than previously. It focuses on a society at war but where hope is held alive by conviction and belief. The invading army, led by the aptly-named Pilgrim, are motivated by a prophecy, but it is unclear how reliable the prophecy may be. For the war-ravaged people of the Badlands, the Widow is trying to offer them hope of a better life afterwards, but until the war is won this vision cannot be delivered. For Sunny his task is more straightforward: he must survive and hopes to raise his son in a better world.

The scope of the series means that the pacing rarely flags (a much more serious problem for Badlands' increasingly tired AMC sister show, The Walking Dead), although the extra episode count does feel a little unnecessary. A few later episodes, heavy on flashbacks or sequences of characters being imprisoned and working out how to escape, do feel like they may have struggled to tell more worthwhile stories, but Badlands is pretty good at handling filler material. It uses it as a way of exploring added character depth or revealing more backstory, and sometimes quite inventively, so it wears the increased length reasonably well.

The third season also benefits from an improved set of villains. Marton Csokas' Baron Quinn was, how shall we say, a less-than-compelling villain and it was a relief to see him off at the end of Season 2. Babou Ceesay makes a more interesting antagonist as the newly-arrived Pilgrim, whilst promoting the recurring Sherman Augustus into a regular as Nathaniel Moon was a great idea, as he adds gravitas to the cast. A possible weak point is that the new character of Castor (Game of Thrones' Dean-Charles Chapman) feels a little underdeveloped given his heavy screentime in the early part of the season.

The returning cast all do great work, with the lead trio of Daniel Wu (Sunny), Nick Frost (Bajie) and Emily Beecham (the Widow) all being outstanding as normal. All three characters get a lot of development this season and more depth added. Lewis Tan is also a welcome addition to the core cast this season. The show also figures out what to do with MK (Aramis Knight) after two seasons of flapping around a bit with him, which is great news. Even better is that Orla Brady (Lydia), who had little to do in Season 2, has a much stronger storyline and presence this season, more fitting an actress of her calibre.

In almost every aspect, the third season of Into the Badlands is the best, with some of the finest storytelling, acting and action of the entire series. It is let down by a few minor issues. The violence in Season 3 does feel a bit more excessive than previously. Badlands has always had action, blood and carnage, but it's never really dwelt on it or been gratuitous in how it's handled. This season that's definitely not the case and there's a few scenes which do feel genuinely unpleasant. It's only a few scenes out of sixteen episodes, but it feels like a creative misstep (similar to the growing reliance on shock-gore in The Walking Dead from the midpoint of the series onwards) and takes attention away from the still-breathtaking fight choreography.

Into the Badlands' final season (****½) is a compelling, fast-paced pulp epic. It's well-acted, beautifully choreographed and has a genuinely enjoyable story. Some gratuitous violence and a few wheel-spinning scenes late in the season detract a little, but otherwise the series comes to a fine and worthwhile close. The season is available now in the USA and on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Into the Badlands: Season 2

Baron Quinn's machinations have come to naught. His former Regent, Sunny, is now a slave in a mine outside the Badlands' borders. The Widow's military campaign threatens the lands now governed by Quinn's son, whilst Veil has given birth to her and Sunny's son. MK is being trained in the use of his unusual powers by those who know it best. But nothing is quite as it seems and a new sequence of events threatens to plunge the Badlands into chaos once more.

The first season of Into the Badlands was terrific pulp fun, a show operating on clearly a limited budget but one that told a solid story using some superb actors and fight choreography. The second season is a serious improvement. The show's had a hefty budget increase, with lots more use of CGI, more sets and even more spectacular action scenes. More importantly, the story is a lot stronger this time around, more firmly rooted in the characters and their interpersonal relationships.

Which is not to say that Into the Badlands has lost its edge. The show remains resolutely bonkers, with characters backstabbing one another on the regular, hordes of extras being killed at the drop of a hat and some episodes featuring more story developments than some shows manage in entire seasons. The pace is sometimes too frenetic, with the show feeling like it has too many ideas to jam into its runtime despite Season 2 having twice the episodes of the first season.

The series feels more epic, a combination of the greater episode count, the aforementioned budget increase and the fact that the show is now shot in Ireland, which gives it more bang for its buck than shooting in Louisiana (which requires several changes of location for major characters, since they clearly can't recreate the same environments perfectly). It does mean that the show's former specific geographic setting - the Badlands were supposed to be between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi - becomes rather vaguer in the second season until the producers just give up. There's more of a political feeling to the second season as well, with the Widow vs. Quinn conflict of the first season opening up with the other barons and their factions introduced and explored.

This is all great stuff, but it's really the characters that drive the show forward. Everyone gets their time in the sun. Sunny (Daniel Wu) is more driven and relentless in his quest to escape and return home, Veil (Madeleine Mantock) gets far more screentime as she finds herself in an awkward situation and the Widow (Emily Beecham) remains as driven and impressive a character as ever. Waldo (Stephen Lang) gets a lot more to do as well and the show benefits from his gravitas. Lydia (Orla Brady) doesn't have much to do, though, and one of the season's weaker points is how it seems to be constantly trying to find something for her to do, resulting in a number of tedious subplots until she finally rejoins the main story near the end of the season.

The best character of the second season, though, is newcomer Bajie, played with charisma by Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul). Once you get used to the odd site of Frost without Simon Pegg being nearby, he turns in an excellent performance laden with humour but also showing an unexpected dramatic depth, especially once his backstory is revealed later in the season. Earlier on he proves to be an able foil for Sunny, and you eventually realise he's playing the Pigsy to Sunny's Monkey King (Into the Badlands is based, albeit loosely, on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West), complete with his own impressive (if shambolic) fighting style.

There's not much to knock the second season of Into the Badlands (****½) for. Sometimes the pacing is a little too fast, and maybe a few plot twists would be more effective or emotionally devastating if they'd been allowed time to breathe, but beyond that it's as compelling and fun a slice of pulp fiction as the first season, but with much better production values, effects and even better fight sequences. Hugely enjoyable. The season is available in the United States on DVD and Blu-Ray, and in the UK on Amazon Prime Video.

Into the Badlands: Season 1

Five hundred years after the old world fell, the Badlands are controlled by six barons. They control the lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi; nothing is said to lie beyond their borders except wasteland and death. Sunny, the regent (chief soldier) and most trusted servant of Baron Quinn, is convinced that something does exist beyond the Badlands, a safe home for his lover Veil and their unborn son. His discovery of a young boy with strange powers, MK, catalyses his plan to flee the Badlands, just as full-scale war erupts between Quinn and a rival baron, the Widow, who is also searching for the boy.

Into the Badlands is an American pulp action series airing on the cable channel AMC, very loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The series depicts a post-apocalyptic feudal society that has developed after the collapse of modern society, where a few cars and some electricity have survived but guns have not, forcing everyone to use martial arts and swords in combat. The show has a highly contrived premise (to put it mildly) but it doesn't really matter because the show is so much fun.

The show succeeds thanks to its cast, who play their parts (mostly) to perfection. Chinese-American actor Daniel Wu was cast as Sunny for both his impressive martial arts skills but also his charisma and brooding presence, occasionally tempered by moments of vulnerability (especially where Veil is concerned) and his tortured loyalty to Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas). Orla Brady brings an impressive amount of class and presence to the role of Lydia, Quinn's older wife who is locked in a battle of wills with his new, younger bride Jade (Sarah Bolger, finally allowed to shine after being criminally underused in The Tudors). Aramis Knight is effective as the mysterious MK, but doesn't have a lot to do apart from looking permanently confused. Madeleine Mantock (The Tomorrow People, the forthcoming Charmed reboot) also impresses in a small role as Veil. Emily Beecham proves to be a great antagonist as the Widow, with Ally Ioannides impressing as Tilda, her teenage protege whose loyalties are also tested as the story proceeds. A weak link is Csokas, who's never been particularly great (his Celeborn in the Lord of the Rings movies was arguably the weakest link in an otherwise exceptional cast) and here veers between high camp and scenery-chewing ham with no layers to be found.

The other key element to the show's success is the action. Elaborate fight sequences and impressive stunts abound, with fights that move from clinical, brutal efficiency to epic engagements featuring impressive wirework. More than a touch of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon can be found here.

The show's first season also benefits from its low episode count. In just six episodes the show has to set up the world, establish a large cast of characters and let a complex storyline run its course, complete with big action scenes and moments of impressive dramatic action. This focus benefits the season, also the budget does not. Like its network mate, The Walking Dead, Into the Badlands is clearly operating under a very low budget compared to many of the other shows on air at the moment and sometimes struggles to sell larger and more epic moments on screen, relying on pre-existing locations and the impressive stunt team to overcome the clearly limited number of sets.

The first season of Into the Badlands (****) is not high art, but it's pulp fun with a mostly great cast and some very impressive fight scenes which overcome questionable worldbuilding and limited production values. The season is available now in the USA (DVD, Blu-Ray). It is also available to watch for Amazon Prime subscribers in the UK.