TV review: Road trip chiller Lovecraft Country tackled racism’s horrors head-on

Modern horror owes a bit of a debt to HP Lovecraft.

From The Thing to Alien and even Ghostbusters, the influential writer popularised the idea of scary things existing beyond the understanding of mortal comprehension.

You know, like cosmic entities, the nature of madness and UK exam results algorithms.

It’s hard to adapt Lovecraft’s works now because, being around a century old, it’s a bit dated. Oh, and Lovecraft was, at times, a gibbering racist.

The problem of bringing Lovecraft Country to the small screen has been solved by Lovecraft Country, going by the first episode.

Instead of ignoring the racism in these stories, it instead looks to tackle them head on in this classy 10-part horror thriller.

Atticus Freeman, with friend Letitia and his Uncle George, embark on a road trip across 1950s America in search of his missing father – and the town of Arkham.

The idea that humans are worse than monsters isn’t new but it is effective in Jim Crow-era USA. Billboards bearing threatening, racist messages stand outside one of the infamous Sundown Towns, places where black people were targeted at night.

Aside from the horror movie final 10 minutes, there wasn’t a great deal of supernatural terror in episode one of Lovecraft Country; the rednecks were scary enough.

Lovecraft Country, Sky Atlantic, Monday, 9pm

Mandy BBC2, Thursday, 9.30pm

No one quite does vacant sincerity like Screenwipe and Motherland star Diane Morgan.

Her deadpan skills are put to use in a series she’s written and starred in, playing the dead-eyed titular heroine.

Happily, she is as moronic as Diane’s other characters. At one stage she is interviewed for a job in a fried chicken restaurant and asked what her skills are.

“I’m not a grass,” she replies.

The only shame is Mandy is spread over six 15-minute episodes.

Give us a half-hour of this, please.