HBO gives full trailer for the new science drama The Nevers

An inexplicable event lends supernatural powers to a select group of people in Victorian London who must fight prejudice and those who will use their abilities in The Nevers, a new original series coming to HBO next month.

HBO won a fierce bid war and a direct order in 2018 with Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Hut in the woods, etc.) as a writer, director, executive producer and showrunner. Whedon brought Douglas Petrie and Jane Espenson – both worked with Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer—Onboard as additional writers / executive producers. He said the following about the series title during Comic-Con in 2018:

They themselves are not called that [The Nevers] in the show. It is a phrase intended to elicit a kind of reaction to their strangeness to what is considered unnatural. The idea that you should never be like that, you should never have existed. Something is not as it should be, and you do not have the right to have any foreign power or ability. And the idea, that some people are not of the natural order, is fascinating to me. I do not agree with that. But to me, it’s one of those things where you take something negative, and you carry it as a tribute. Certain things can never happen – they happen. And the people they happen to take their place in the world.

Last November, Whedon announced he would halt the project, citing exhaustion and the “physical challenges of making such a big show during a global pandemic.” (Whedon has been plagued by workplace harassment allegations over the past few months – both from Ray Fisher, or Cyborg, during Justice League reshoots, and from various Buffy members of the cast – but HBO said there were no similar reports about Whedon during the production of The Nevers.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted production, but the ten deliveries will be split into two parts. Six episodes will air on HBO (and air on HBO Max) starting April 11, while the remaining four, hopefully this year, will be completed and aired later. “There was a kind of natural departure attempt at six, so the idea was to broadcast six episodes,” Casey Bloys, chief executive of HBO and HBO Max, told The Wrap last month. “So we at least had something to sit out for subscribers and fans out there.”

According to the official premise:

August 1896. Victorian London was brought to life by a supernatural event that gave certain people – mostly women – abnormal abilities, from the wonderful to the disturbing. But regardless of their specific ‘turns’, everyone belonging to this new underclass is in serious danger. It falls to the mysterious, fast-paced widow Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) and the brilliant young inventor Penance Adair (Ann Skelly) to protect and nurture these gifted ‘orphans’. To do so, they will have to face the cruel forces that are determined to destroy their kind.

The launch opens three years after the unexplained event led to the emergence of the extraordinary capabilities of the “Touched.” Amalia and Penance work with a wealthy spinner named Lavinia Bidlow (Olivia Williams), who runs the Orphanage, a haven for the affected. These include Annie Carbey (Rochelle Neil), aka Bonfire, who can control fire; Dr. Horatio Cousens (Zackary Momoh), who has the gift of healing; Primrose Chattoway (Anna Devlin), standing 10 feet tall; Myrtle Haplisch (Viola Prettejohn), who lost the ability to speak any language other people could understand; Mary Brighton (Eleanor Tomlinson), a singer who must find her voice to inspire hope in the city; and Desirée Blodgett (Ella Smith), a prostitute with a young dumb boy. Amy Manson plays Maladie, an unstable and violent member of the Touched who starts a murder spree.

The cast also features Ben Chaplin as Detective Frank Mundi, who is trying to solve a series of brutal murders; Pip Torrens as Lord Massen, who sees Touched as a threat to society; Nick Frost as Declan Orrun, or the beggar king, an amoral criminal overlord who helps Amalia if it suits him; Denis O’Hare as indifferent surgeon, Dr. Edmund Hague, who wants to discover the source of these unusual abilities; Tom Riley as Augie Bidlow, the horny younger brother of Lavinia; Kiran Sonia Sawar as Harriet Kaur, a Scottish Sikh and prospective lawyer; Elizabeth Berrington as the street sign Lucy Best; and James Norton as Hugo Swan, described as a ‘pansexual aristocrat’ who owns a private underground club and regards the Touched as a true gold mine for exploitation.

HBO released a first teaser in February, with plenty of fisticuffs and derring-do. This latest trailer contains the basic premise and gives us a better idea of ​​the overall tenor of the series. It looks like a winning mix of action, humor and suspense, so color us intrigued. The Nevers debuted on April 11, 2021 on HBO and HBO Max.

List by HBO