The Talamasca: The Secret Order is AMC’s paranormal power move (horror TV series, trailer).
There’s something spooky in the shadows this October, and—spoiler alert—it’s not a rerun of The Walking Dead. Instead, AMC is opening the ancient, candle-lit doors of Anne Rice’s The Talamasca: The Secret Order, a horror series steeped in dusty tomes, ghostly whispers, and the sort of occult bureaucracy that would make the X-Files look like the village parish council.
Premiering 26th October 2025 on AMC and AMC+, this is the third live-action show from the so-called Immortal Universe—AMC’s umbrella for all things Anne Rice, where vampires lounge tastefully, witches hex with fashion sense, and now, the Talamasca investigates from the shadows like a pack of psychic MI5 agents with rosary beads and severely haunted backstories.
For those unfamiliar with Rice’s literary canon (or who were too traumatised by Tom Cruise’s hair in Interview with the Vampire), the Talamasca is a secret society dating back to 758 AD. Yes, it’s older than tea bags. Formed by a trio of supernatural entities with names like Teskhamen and Gremt—perfect if you’re naming a prog rock band—it’s basically the scholarly wing of the supernatural world, dedicated to observing and recording paranormal phenomena, but never interfering. Unless, of course, things get a bit bitey.
Think: The Vatican meets the Ghostbusters, minus the proton packs but plus a lot more staring pensively into mirrors.
In The Talamasca: The Secret Order, we’re getting an entirely new story, albeit one woven deeply into Rice’s mythos. The six-part series stars Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole, William Fichtner as a character only known as Jasper (and you just know he wears gloves indoors), Elizabeth McGovern as Helen (possibly the only person who could convincingly run a global coven on a budget), and Maisie Richardson-Sellers as Olive, who, given the genre, is either the linchpin of a centuries-old prophecy or cursed to explode by episode four.
Filming has taken place in that most gothic of British cities, Manchester—where, let’s face it, even the Greggs can look haunted on the right day. With John Lee Hancock and Mark Lafferty running the show, the tone is expected to lean into the high-stakes cerebral horror of Rice’s novels, with less fangy snogging and more lurking in candlelit libraries, decoding ominous manuscripts that shouldn’t hum quite so loudly.
While the vampires and witches of the Immortal Universe have already had their time to glisten, twitch, and monologue in velvet, The Talamasca promises a more grounded horror—more esoteric than erotic, with a focus on knowledge, history, and metaphysical terror rather than bloodlust and brooding. Although we wouldn’t say no to a little brooding if Fichtner’s involved.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we’ve long admired Anne Rice’s ability to make immortality feel both glamorous and strangely bureaucratic—nothing says “undead menace” like properly filed incident reports and a centuries-old filing system guarded by a ghost called Derek. If The Talamasca can deliver the kind of slow-burn, intellectual horror that Rice hinted at in The Queen of the Damned and Merrick, then it might just be the sleeper hit of spooky season.
So, stock up on salt circles and forbidden manuscripts, and remember: if you hear voices in the walls or your mirror starts offering unsolicited Latin prophecies, don’t panic. It’s probably just someone from the Order taking notes.
Or Jasper. And you really don’t want to interrupt Jasper.
