I've reported this before, but Discovery's ID Channel has a gigantic female audience. (Yes, we are ID Nation, and we are legion.) We are also about to get a bloody bucket-load of new shows, which will be played back-to-back-to-back as we binge our way through story after story of women being brutalized. We are an audience of Tammy Wynette masochists: We keep coming back for more punishment, standing by our maniac.
If you are unfamiliar with ID, it bills itself as "true crime," composed mostly of half-hour docudramas based on some violent niche: Deadly Women, Stalked, and Nightmare Next Door. When the team behind it ran out of general fear scenarios, they began churning out specialized fare like Swamp Murders and Beauty Queen Murders.
The best shows on the network possess the element of surprise, along the lines of, "Damn, I thought you were Mr. Right, but you just ate my cat," or "Hmm, the nice young man who moved in down the hall sure has a peculiar odor coming from his apartment," or "I went on a swamp tour, and all I got was this lousy machete wound."
In that vein, the execs at ID hunkered down in a cabin in the woods with no cellphone reception and came up with these offerings for October, just in time for Halloween!
Hell House (premiered Oct. 10)
I just finished a book about John Wayne Gacy and his house of horrors. It was a basic suburban Midwestern domicile on a quiet street in Des Plaines, Ill., that just so happened to have the bodies of several young men buried in the crawlspace. It has since been demolished, but I'm sure people still drive by the address and get a tingle. This is the impetus for Hell House, the idea that demonic energies can linger in places where "murder after horrific murder" have taken place. (I've always wondered why ID never had an It Happened Here-type show, but this comes the closest so far.)
True Nightmares (Oct. 14)
Remember that hot date when you steamed up the windows so badly that you couldn't tell what that creepy noise was outside your car? And then when you got home and stepped out of your car there was a bloody hook-hand hanging from the door handle? We've all been there. True Nightmares promises to tell the "real" stories behind scary urban legends. This is actually a great idea and I can't believe nobody thought of it sooner. It might have saved us from weaker offerings like Young, Hot & Crooked.
Do Not Disturb: Hotel Horrors (Oct. 21)
Just like that, we are back to niche true crime. Do Not Disturb will outline bad things that have happened in five-star hotels, like when they forget to put a mint on your pillow or when Justin Bieber's posse has rented nine of the 10 rooms on your floor. (Actually, my idea of a nightmare hotel visit is one where I leave with bedbugs, but we'll see where this goes.) Strangely, this series is produced by Joel Schumacher, who directed The Lost Boys, Batman Forever, and a few episodes of House of Cards. ID promises a "cinematic" take on each tale — which, if done well, could be a good addition to the roster.
Behind Closed Doors: Shocking Secrets (Oct. 26)
This is a one-hour special about domestic violence that ID swears will "jolt even the most jaded viewers." Really? Could you be more gratuitous? Do we really need a show that outdoes itself in the upsetting-depictions-of-women-being-traumatized department? I'm not sure why this subject angers me so, but seeing a woman stalked, raped, and dumped in a cistern on yet another show is still what I call quality entertainment. It seems even ID knows it's crossing some sort of line, because Behind Closed Doors is trying to inject some sort of consciousness-raising message into the whole thing, pointing out how domestic violence crosses all socioeconomic backgrounds and that the most dangerous time for victims is when they decide to leave their abusers. Reading between the teleplay's lines, though, we see that these facts merely mean that there are thousands of stories to choose from and depict. Huzzah! How did they fit it all into an hour?
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