Scott Brown Blends Shaving And Murder With Darkly Funny ‘Stockholm’

We loved Writer/Director Scott Brown‘s first series, Blue Movies, a slickly-written comedy that ended up nominated for a Streamy Award in 2010. His follow-up, Asylum, wasn’t half bad either. Now, Brown has returned with Stockholm, a dark, droll romp about a serial killer’s relationship with his potential victim. The series is being hosted on Blip and the first two episodes dropped today. Zach Gold (a frequent Brown actor who got to play the porno version of The Joker in Blue Movies) plays the male lead with newcomer Brittani Noel as his female counterpart.

If Blue Movies was “Boogie Nights meets 30 Rock“, then Stockholm is “Dexter meets 30 Rock”.  Gold’s Heartbreak Strangler combines the insanity and casual double-life of Dexter Morgan with the filter-free chattiness and neuroticism of Liz Lemon. As with Brown’s previous series, the writing here is absolutely top-notch (Brown also has a production role on Larry King Now, which we’ve discussed recently.) The Strangler’s monologue in the second episode is consistently funny throughout, and the acting is just subtle enough that I could easily see Stockholm taking a much darker, more violent turn. Alternatively, it could turn the other way and go down the silly comedy route.

Out of those two options, I think it’s fair to say that Asylum took Door #1 while Blue Movies took Door #2. Personally, I think that Stockholm (which, by the way, is not set in Stockholm at all, despite what the title card would lead you to believe) will open up a third door, swerving wildly between slasher tropes and comic absurdity. Gold certainly has the chops to pull it off, and I feel that Brown’s writing could also hold up to such back-and-forth conditions.

Stockholm will run for five more episodes beyond the two already released, and there should be plenty of surprises ahead. We’ve been promised a cat and I’m sure there will be much more give and take between the two leads (each released episode has pretty much been a monologue; the first by Noel and the second by Gold). Brown has proven himself to be one of the top writers in the web series world, and now we just have to wait and see if the rest of Stockholm knocks us dead or lets us go before it can finish the deed.