Blood Drive

The pilot hour delivers with blood-soaked gusto. The second hour gets more amusing. And wit can be the saving grace for casual viewers of the grindhouse genre.

While it is no heir to what Rodriguez and Tarantino did, Blood Drive is an indulgent "Grindhouse” for all the modern direct-to-video goofiness and weirdness you can only watch at home now anyway.

The deteriorated film effects and the adrenalized driving become less important and instead there are extended subplots involving the possibility of Blood Drive becoming a network TV show or delving into the relationships of the other drivers and the result is a show that's vastly more watchable. The more Blood Drive goes for comedy, the more Slink becomes central and the better Cunningham gets to be.

As semi-ironic, dark and comic exercises in genre go, it is not as clever or carefully shaped as "Ash vs. Evil Dead." But it is miles ahead of "Sharknado" (which also lives on Syfy) and on the whole well-produced and directed, though its effectiveness varies from episode to episode and even from sequence to sequence.

[Grace (Christina Ochoa) and Arthur (Alan Ritchson)] are paired as partners in the race, and their good cop/bad girl dynamic works pretty well. The real attention-getter here, though, is Colin Cunningham, who is hilariously invested in his role as Julian Slink, a sort of steampunk master of ceremonies for the race. It’s hard to make an impression in a series that is so insane, but Mr. Cunningham (who played John Pope in “Falling Skies”) manages it.

Calling Blood Drive a rom-com would be stretching things, but it is refreshing to see that love can still bloom in a world where, if you softly whispered, “I would die for you,” most of the population would take you up on the offer.