HBO superhero show The Nevers is set in Victorian England, but tries desperately to make itself relevant

The need for the show to resonate with our present priorities ties into the frustrating vagueness of the storytelling. In The Nevers, he tries something similar but in period costume, giving X-Men-like powers to women and other devalued members of Victorian society so that they can actually raise their voices against — and physically confront — the male, colonialist, capitalist hegemony. It may be that Whedon and his collaborators, including Buffy writer-producer Jane Espenson, just did not have the same feel for turn-of-the-20th-century London as they did for contemporary suburban California — there is a slightly stilted and synthetic quality to The Nevers, despite the occasional anachronistically modern dialogue. The allegory in Buffy felt universally human and, despite its 1990s suburban specificity, timeless; the framework of The Nevers feels narrower, a more self-conscious attempt to tweak a historical situation to make it relevant to the current social and political moment, with suggestions of human trafficking, medical experimentation, and a literal, highly graphic depiction of the silencing of women’s voices. In considering the future course of The Nevers, of course, it is necessary to point out that Whedon is no longer involved with the show — he left it late last year, coincidentally or not following a round of public accusations of tyrannical and misogynistic behavior on the sets of previous projects.