TV – Lost Girl, Season 2 (2011)

I enjoyed the first season of this Canadian fantasy series so, after a suitable break to catch up with feature films, ploughed into the second. To refresh your memories, this is what I said about the first season:

Lost Girl is a contemporary urban fantasy featuring Bo Dennis (Anna Silk) a bisexual young woman who is rather different from human. By touching other people she can make them do whatever she wishes; by having sex with them she feeds on their life force and kills them – usually unintentionally, but she can't help herself. She lives a nomadic life, forever moving on and leaving a trail of victims behind. At the beginning of the series she rescues Kenzi Malikov (Ksenia Solo), a streetwise young thief, from a rapist. The two become friends and partners. But Bo has come to the attention of other non-humans and discovers that she is a succubus – a member of a population of Fae with varied supernatural powers living as normal people.

Bo learns that the Fae are divided into light and dark factions and, after passing a test, she is expected to join one of them. She refuses to choose and sets up as a private investigator in partnership with Kenzi. She forms a liaison with werewolf Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) who works as a police detective; she discovers that she can have sex with him without killing him, and that by doing so she can rapidly recover from any injuries. Her principal aim – and a plot thread running through the first season – is to discover her origin, as she was abandoned as a baby and given to human parents to bring up.

As the first season of 13 episodes progresses, we see Bo learning how to control and extend her powers while walking an uncomfortable line between the light and dark factions and experiencing a turbulent relationship with Dyson. In the final episode she discovers the identity of her mother, which leads to an outbreak of violence amongst the Fae and high costs for some of her friends.

The second season follows on immediately from the first, although the plot thread concerning Bo’s mother vanishes into the background while she concentrates on her relationship with Dyson (whose backstory we learn a lot more about). There is also a troubling change of leadership among the Fae leading to more tensions and, as the season progresses, a looming threat to all of the Fae. Meanwhile, Bo discovers the hard way that her powers can be far greater than she realised.

As well as the common threads running through the series, each episode contains a self-contained story. These vary considerably in nature (but usually involve some Dark Fae or other supernatural being causing problems), keeping the viewers interested. One aspect to bear in mind is the emphasis on emotions and relationships, which might attract some viewers while deterring others. To sum up, Lost Girl is sexy and amusing and has no pretensions to being anything other than engaging light entertainment – at which it succeeds very well.