Obituary's Black Heart 

OBITUARY. There should be something like a Scoville scale for dark humor, gradations of blackness that range from, say, a No. 2 pencil to the underwing of a raven to the lightless ocean floor to the imagined void of a black hole. Like peppers, not all of these give pleasure to all. And to taste anything but pain, one must generally build a tolerance.

The Hulu series Obituary lies somewhere around the range of a sparkling hunk of coal. It's relatable in its misanthropy, its awful impulses, but not alienating. There is still warmth and light from characters who are, whatever they may have done, still capable of caring and sacrificing for one another. Still, it is set in a newsroom. At the obituaries desk. In rural Ireland.

The grim, cloud-covered little town of Kilraven's newspaper needs an obit writer after the old one keels over at her desk. Elvira Clancy (Siobhán Cullen) is both the best and worst woman for the job, enraptured as she is by death. Her father's words about the town could as easily describe Elvira: "Under that veneer of nothingness, there's a ton of weird shit going on." She's also ambitious about her craft as a writer (more suited to pulp horror than hagiography) and desperate for money. Her father (Michael Smiley), a keen wit dulled by drink, has raised her alone since her mother's death during labor, but lately resigned himself to the dole, the pub and the occasional longshot bet on the ponies. So it's a boon when Elvira lands the newspaper gig and a blow when her editor (David Ganly) informs her she's been knocked down to freelance at £200 per column in a town where people only die of natural causes and accidents every 10 days or so and the one murder in memory is a cold case years old. What's a young woman supporting her father with a head full of homicidal impulses to do? The editor jokes that maybe she ought to start killing people. Given Elvira already mentally drafts the obituaries of those who annoy her, it doesn't take any more suggestion. Already stalking those likely to die, she sets about deciding who deserves it. For this task, her father is a well of information/gossip, as is her lifelong bestie Mallory (Danielle Galligan), to a lesser degree. But sorting the good from the bad is, like making murder look like an accident, trickier than expected, particularly with police and newly hired crime reporter Emerson (Ronan Raftery) sniffing around.

Cullen's Elvira is a marvel, veering from mousy to catlike with the tilt of her deceptively open face. And there is no attempt to make her pitiable or to trace her murderous nature back to a trauma. Elvira is as she is, thrilled to kill and gut a deer and happy to find someone worthy of kicking a ladder out from under. Her cold reasoning doesn't preclude affection, which she has in spades for her father and Mallory. Ganly does fine work letting bits of real feeling drift up to the surface of a sauced clown. And as the half dozen episodes go on, he becomes all the more compelling. Raftery has less to do as a kind of straight man and romantic interest, as the relationship between Elvira and Mallory (whose wardrobe is like Forever 21 crossed with the Squishmallow bin at Costco) holds far more interest.

Somehow, watching an unapologetic murderess in a dreary town filled with cynical shits isn't depressing. In truth, the landscape and streets have their charm if one isn't stuck there without options, and the color palette is immersive, like Wes Anderson without the optimism. The writing is more than clever enough to sustain Elvira's frequent observational voice over. There are sendups of polite society, hypocrisy galore, but there's also surprising tenderness. What better scale for love than the lengths we go to protect or avenge, or what we'd forgive? NR. 45M. HULU.

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Mastodon @jenniferfumikocahill.

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