Glorious badness

THIRTY years ago, when Star Trek was pulled off the screens after its first the network responsible was innundated by mad fans (now known as "Trekkies") who threatened they would boycott all products advertised on the network if Kirk and Spock were not brought back to boldly go where no space opera had gone before. Something similar is stirring in the TV heartland of the US with news that the giant network, CBS, is rumoured to be cancelling the cult TV series, American Gothic. This has prompted thousands of equally crazed fans worldwide to burn up the Internet with their "Save American Gothic Petition" pages.

There's been a lot of feverish activity of late: someone, somewhere on the net has heard through a friend of a friend that the network had sold off the sets and other production material from the show and someone else has been analysing the most recent interviews with the show's cast and they didn't sound too optimistic about a second series.

But why the fuss?

It's got something to do with American Gothic being a very odd programme - the sort that appeals to cultists. It's also got something to do with the programme being an excellent piece of progressive television.

Put glibly, American Gothic is a cross between Twin Peaks, the X Files and a Stephen King novel. It is also something of a prime time novelty in that its storylines allow evil to triumph over good and it is believed that it is this aspect of the show that has the network scurrying to scrap it before its number of fans reaches a critical mass Star Trek level.

It is set in a dozy South Carolina town called Trinity (the religious symbolism is important); its main character is the local sherrif, Lucas Buck, who just happens to be the devil. Or at least something along the lines of the devil - nobody, including the cast and writer, seems to know.

Sheriff Buck definitely has psychic abilities, being able to materialise wherever he wants; and the notion of doing "good" doesn't seem to interest him that much. At best, he's amoral. He has designs on the real star of the show, the 14 year old Caleb (strangely enough, the real name of the boy who plays Caleb is Lucas Black).

A lot of the oddity value of the show lies in the fact that most of the 22 episodes of the first series operate as "stand alones" in that they provide no background material to the strange going ons in the town of Trinity and are just 500 minute pieces of finite drama. Viewers who missed the pilot episode (most of the world) and come in late just can't get a handle on the show. Although it's a long, intricate story, these are the fundamental facts: Sherrif Buck raped Caleb's mother, who then committed suicide. He then murdered Caleb's sister (who appears in the show as a ghost) and blamed it on Caleb's father who committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial.

The sherrif is Caleb's biological father, because of the rape, and now wants to lure the innocent boy over to the dark side by gaining custody of him.

Other characters roam in and out of the action, each adding different levels to each week's script: Gail, who is Caleb's cousin, is a local reporter who keeps having strange visions involving Caleb - Sherrif Buck is also implicated in her parents' murder but she is nonetheless sexually attracted to him.

Ben Healy is the sherrifs deputy and he knows Sherrif Buck is quite possibly the devil; he's also the only person who witnessed Sherrif Buck murdering Merlyn, Caleb's sister, but seems powerless, or unwilling, to act.

Merlyn is cast as an angel type figure who can only be seen and heard by Caleb. She appears every so often to obliquely warn Caleb about Sherrif Buck's real idendity.

The local doctor, Matt Crower, is also tuned in to Buck's evil ways and becomes a father figure to Caleb but he is now resident in a psychiatric hospital after his investigation into occult religions made him go off the deep end.

Then there's Selena, who is Caleb's teacher but is also the sherrifs occasional partner and there's Loris, the owner of the local boarding house and a dabbler in the occult who has legal custody of Caleb ... try to imagine The Waltons as a bunch of dysfunctional, devil worshipping oddities who have been fallen off the pages of a X Flles script and you're getting somewhere close.

But perhaps the most bizzare thing about American Gothic is that the show's originator and writer is Shaun Cassidy - as in the Shaun Cassidy who was once a teenybopper idol (the Take That of his day) and then went on to star in the Hardy Boys - he's David Cassidy's brother.

"I don't view American Gothic as violent or over the top," says Shaun, "I view it as an adult fairy tale, a classic story of good versus evil. It's important to understand how Sherrif Buck does his handiwork. He doesn't get his hands dirty very much. Manipulation is his thing, he gets people into certain positions and situations and stands by as all hell, as it were, breaks loose."

The show, which was first broadcast in the US last September, is now nearing the end of its 22 programme run (over here, both Channel 4 and Network 2 carry it). The "Trinity Chamber Of Commerce" as the show's diehard fans are known, are now intensively lobbying CBS to bring the series back, taking ads in the trade magazines to draw attention to their plight and even writing in their thousands to the bosses of rival networks, urging them to take up the programme. They're even supported by an organisation called "Viewers For Quality Television", a large, grassroots pressure group which campaign for less dross and more substance on American television screens.

WHEN American Gothic first went on air, it was billed as CBS's answer to the X Files: perhaps in its attempt to compete with Mulder and Scully, it pushed the parameters a bit too far for the television executives - or as one anonymous source at CBS puts it: "it just got a bit too weird".