As usual, I was fashionably late in getting around to watch this Netflix blockbuster, but being a fan of all things Edgar Allen Poe, watching it was inevitable. And even if I wasn’t such a big fan of Poe, the premise might be far too interesting to ignore. It’s a dramatized version of Poe’s story of the same name, while the themes and plots of some of his other most famous works are woven into each episode.

The general plot goes thusly: Roderick Usher and his sister, Madeline, are the billionaire owners of a corrupt pharmaceutical giant on trial for a drug that has killed millions. Suddenly, Roderick’s children begin to die in mysterious circumstances and he finally invites the man prosecuting him, C. August Dupin, to his abandoned childhood home to ‘confess’ to his crimes.

Overall I enjoyed the series, but it never quite fully hooked me. There were several reasons for that. One, I find it odd that each and every one of Roderick Usher’s children are completely and irredeemably depraved, leading lives of unabashed debauchery and obsessed with their own pleasure. You mean to tell me not one offspring became just a normal, relatively well-adjusted person?

Two, the constant and forced profanity. As I’ve said many times before, I spent four years as a United States Marines. I was in the infantry. So I’m not some overzealous prude clutching pearls at any language that goes beyond ‘gosh’. But my goodness, what purpose does so much profanity serve?

It was even forced into common phrases, which got a huge eyeroll from me. For instance, instead of saying ‘he knows which side his bread’s buttered on’, one character says ‘he knows which side his d**k’s buttered on’.

Really? Did we really need to pepper in adult language in that line? It’s crass and it comes across like a 14-year-old who just recently learned some new swears. It’s juvenile.

Last of all, in the final episode the show suddenly became ham-fisted and preachy. I easily picked up on the themes and the message that the show’s creators wanted to convey throughout the series. At times subtle, at times a little in-your-face, but never sanctimonious until the finale. Madeline, who, by the way, is morally reprehensible in every way and guilty of several atrocities, deigns to sermonize the viewers in an exhausting monologue just before the climax.

Which would have been bad enough except that the show did not seem to want to push back on what she said or underline the sheer hypocrisy of it all. It was as if the show wanted us to nod along and applaud, to suddenly like this character and root for her devious designs.

And how’s this for ham-fisted? At one point the show’s main antagonist, a demon of sorts or perhaps even the very Devil himself, mentions someone else with whom they’d struck a deal and proceeds to clearly identify this ‘mystery person’ by lifting an infamous line from one of his 2016 presidential campaign rallies.

The other character, one we have just learned in this same episode has committed every crime from rape to murder many times over, chimes in with, “Any chance that his bill is coming due soon? Even I have my limits.” Cue an eyeroll so big I gave myself a migraine. No, Netflix writers and producers, I am not going to chuckle along with this mass murderer who thinks he is somehow less damned than anyone else in the world.

Aside from these complaints, and despite how much time I spent on them, I really did enjoy the show, even if it left a sour taste in my mouth. The adaption of so many Poe stories was a triumph. Even the names of all the main characters, they were all names from Poe’s works. It truly was brilliant work.

My highest praise, however, goes to the acting. These actors did such a tremendous job, but I especially want to single out Mark Hamill, who portrayed Arthur Pym, the lawyer and fixer of the Usher family. Even though I just lambasted his character two paragraphs earlier, I would be remiss not to mention how mesmerizing he was as ‘the Pym reaper’. Hamill stole every scene with a gravelly voice and grave, unchanging countenance. Anytime Pym took the stage, I had to sit up straighter and really focus on whatever was about to unfold.

So if you have a Netflix account and are a fan of dark urban fiction, this is a show I strongly recommend as long as you can deal with the excessive profanity and flashes of gore. I may even watch it again in the future, despite my problems with the show.