Teacup is a horrifically bad horror series
Peacock’s new show has neither chills nor thrills
Photo: Mark Hill/PEACOCK
This show could have been an email. We’re not kidding. Peacock’s new horror-tinged sci-fi thriller isn’t only one of the least imaginative shows of 2024; it’s also crackling with so much dead air that each 35-minute episode could be trimmed down to a tight five. The amount of times characters tell each other how scared they are could fill the runtime of a Marvel movie. Take this exchange between two teens: “I’m petrified.” “I’m petrified, too.” “We can be petrified together.” “Yeah, maybe we can.” (Also, when was the last time you heard a Zoomer use the word “petrified” in casual conversation?) Teacup is nominally the creation of writer-producer Ian McCulloch (Yellowstone, Chicago Fire), but the writing is so soulless and the plot so tropey that we have a sneaking suspicion it was penned by ChatGPT.
Based on Robert R. McCammon’s 1988 novel Stinger, Teacup is set on a farm in Georgia that’s home to the repressed Chenoweth family. The residents include Maggie (Yvonne Strahovski), a level-headed veterinarian; her two cardboard children, Arlo (Caleb Dolden) and Meryl (Emilie Bierre); her husband, James (Scott Speedman), who mostly walks around the house mumbling; and James’ mother, Ellen (Kathy Baker), who has an ax to grind with her daughter-in-law.
There are, naturally, things in the woods: a giant wolf, a possessed lady covered in blood (Adelina Anthony), and sinister guys in old-timey gas masks. So of course adorable moppet Arlo goes wandering through the trees after dark, where he crosses paths with the possessed lady and then his eyes go all glowy. He stumbles home and starts saying creepy things that alarm his family, because he’s now the Three-Eyed Raven—er, the harbinger—who speaks for the aliens who are causing those things to be in the woods.
You might think this is leading up to thrills and chills, or at least running and hiding. Instead, there’s just a lot of murmuring and angst among the Chenoweths and their neighbors, who are also sheltering in the farmhouse, among them the Shanley family (Diany Rodriguez, Luciano Leroux, and Chaske Spencer). There’s also Donald Kelly (Boris McGiver), a gun-toting good ol’ boy who stalks through the forest while saying stuff that’s happening around him out loud (“Dead body…pitch-black…big bad fuckin’ dog…”).