The first trailer for A Series of Unfortunate Events is stuffed with Easter eggs
Plus an airdate and a hint of Neil Patrick Harris as the creepy cousin
The first trailer for Netflix’s adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is here, and as might be expected, it’s pretty weird.
Starring Family Guy’s Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket – the fictional author supposedly behind the original series of books, actually penned by Daniel Handler – the teaser spends most of its time warning viewers against tuning in. The danger? The extreme melancholia they’ll experience in viewing the tragic lives of orphans Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire.
However, if you do manage to blink away the tears and have a look at the set Warburton is strolling through, you’d be treated to many an Easter egg of note to fans of the book series, including: a clapperboard for film 'The Littlest Elf' (which is referred to throughout the novels), a taxi from Lake Lachrymose (a setting in book 3, The Wide Window) and a box labelled “Very Flammable Dandelions” – a reference to the mysterious VFD organisation that the orphans investigate over the course of the series.
And then of course, the greatest hint of all – the evil laugh of Neil Patrick Harris’s Count Olaf, a cousin to the orphans who spends most of the series pursuing them in various disguises for their fortune, and whose new incarnation we’ll actually get to see when the series is released on February 13th.
In a release accompanying the trailer, “Snicket” said: “If you like watching stories in which children enjoy pleasant rides in truck beds, on their way to colorful destinations where they finally solve the curious mysteries plaguing their lives...That story is streaming elsewhere.”
Sounds like perfect family fare, then.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events will be available to stream on Netflix from 13th January 2017
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
