It might require a double take to recognize him, as he is rather heavily made up for the role of Count Olaf, the villain of the tale, who becomes the children’s first guardian through questionable means and does not exactly have their best interests at heart. Things really fall into place, though, when Neil Patrick Harris materializes.
The child actors are all quite good, as they have to be - this series is all about tone, and not every young performer could nail the one required here. And a special casting prize should go to whoever found Presley Smith, a very expressive infant portraying Sunny, whose preverbal blatherings are not as meaningless as they sound (something we learn from subtitles). Klaus (Louis Hynes), who is “a little older than 12,” reads more than any 12-year-old should. Violet (Malina Weissman), the oldest, is a tinkerer, a sort of young MacGyver. The story follows three children, the Baudelaires, who, it seems, are orphaned by a fire within the first few minutes. He warns glumly that viewers are about to embark on a “descent into misery, tribulation and dire inconvenience,” and he is not wrong. The tone of these gothic tales is twisted and gloomy, and in Patrick Warburton this version has found the perfect Lemony to narrate them.
The show is called, of course, “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” and it’s based on the popular books, ostensibly written by Lemony Snicket but in fact written by an actual person, Daniel Handler. Parents: Brace yourselves for a dark turn in your children’s senses of humor and a marked improvement in their vocabularies. Each generation apparently must have its own Lemony Snicket adaptation, and today’s 10-year-olds have been given a marvelously tangy one, courtesy of Netflix, that turns the franchise into an eight-episode series that becomes available on Friday.
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