“What We Do in the Shadows” ran for six seasons and 61 episodes on FX, from its first broadcast on March 27, 2019, to its last on December 16, 2024. Jemaine Clement created it. The show follows four vampire roommates on Staten Island, and it never once lets them off the hook for being monsters.
Trailer, via FX Networks.
Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja and Colin Robinson
The premise is a mockumentary about the nightly lives of traditional vampires Nandor, Laszlo and Nadja, sharing a house with Colin Robinson, an energy vampire. Kayvan Novak plays Nandor the Relentless. Matt Berry plays Laszlo Cravensworth. Natasia Demetriou plays Nadja. Mark Proksch plays Colin Robinson.
Harvey Guillén plays Guillermo de la Cruz, Nandor’s familiar. Guillermo wants to become a vampire. His loyalty to Nandor keeps colliding with that wish, and his ancestry as a descendant of the vampire hunter Van Helsing complicates everything.
That is the engine of the series. The vampires clash with the modern world, with other supernatural beings, and with each other. The documentary form sells it: the camera is always there, and the vampires keep performing for it.
A Franchise With a Canon
The show is based on the 2014 New Zealand film written and directed by Clement and Taika Waititi. Both serve as executive producers. It is the second television series in the franchise, after the spin-off “Wellington Paranormal” (2018–2022).
Both shows share the same canon as the original film. Characters from the film appear, including Clement’s and Waititi’s.
| Entry | Year | Format |
|---|---|---|
| What We Do in the Shadows (film) | 2014 | Feature film |
| Wellington Paranormal | 2018–2022 | Television series |
| What We Do in the Shadows (TV series) | 2019–2024 | Television series |
Kristen Schaal also stars. The cast list is the show’s strongest asset, and the writing gives each performer a distinct register: Novak’s Nandor is pompous and needy, Berry’s Laszlo is a loud cad, Demetriou’s Nadja is the sharpest of the three, Proksch’s Colin Robinson drains people by boring them.
35 Emmy Nominations
The show received critical acclaim, particularly for its cast and writing. It drew 35 Emmy Award nominations, including four for Outstanding Comedy Series, for its second, third, fifth and sixth seasons.
That is a real measure of how the industry saw it. The Outstanding Comedy Series nods skipped the first and fourth seasons, which is a quirk worth noting but not a verdict.
The published critical score is 8.3/10, with a Metacritic score of 83/100.
What Holds Up
The mockumentary format is the risk. It can turn into a tic, and six seasons is a long time to keep a camera crew inside one house. The show survives because the vampires are genuinely awful and genuinely funny about it.
Guillermo is the reason to stay. His story is the only one with a real arc: a familiar who wants the promotion, a Van Helsing descendant who keeps saving the vampires he serves. The comedy lands harder because his want is sincere.
The four Outstanding Comedy Series nominations tell you the voters kept showing up. So did the audience.
This is a franchise that knew what it was. Clement and Waititi built a canon across a film, a spin-off and a series, and the series is the best of the three.
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