Pictured: the cast of Eternally Yours. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau / CBS.
CBS has a new comedy with some bite. Eternally Yours, from Ghosts creators Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, premiered Thursday, October 8, and airs Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, between Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage and Elsbeth. Episodes stream live on Paramount+ for Premium subscribers and are available to all Paramount+ plans the next day.
What it’s about
Charles and Liz Blythe are vampires who have been married for 500 years and now live in present-day Seattle with an eccentric coven of relatives. After centuries together, the marriage has gotten a little stale, and things are shaken up when their adopted daughter brings home her human boyfriend, Max. Seattle’s famously overcast skies help explain how the family gets around in daylight, one of several playful twists on vampire lore.
Port and Wiseman told Parade they first pitched the idea about 11 years ago, but it didn’t make it past the pilot stage at the time. The pair went on to adapt the British series Ghosts for CBS, which became one of the network’s biggest comedy hits.
The cast
- Ed Weeks (The Mindy Project) as Charles Blythe, a 500-year-old vampire
- Allegra Edwards as his wife, Liz Blythe
- Helen J. Shen as their adopted daughter, Emma, a veterinarian
- Jaren Lewison (Never Have I Ever) as Max, her human boyfriend, who works at the Social Security office
- Parker Young as Charles’s brother Jesse, a vampire fitness trainer
- Rose Abdoo as Jesse’s human wife, Phyllis, whose memory he wipes whenever she gets close to the truth
- Shylo Molina and Tristan Michael Brown as Henry and Mort, Jesse and Phyllis’s half-vampire sons
Ratings and reviews
The pilot drew 4.12 million viewers and a 0.31 rating among adults 18 to 49, according to The TV Ratings Guide. That was below its lead-in, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage (5.5 million), but ahead of Elsbeth (3.75 million) in the hour after it.
Critics have been mostly warm so far, with a 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes from an early batch of reviews. The A.V. Club said the show “shows promise,” praising Charles’s deadpan take on immortality and singling out Rose Abdoo as a standout, while noting that much of the pilot stays inside the family home and that vampires in the suburbs is familiar territory after What We Do in the Shadows. Other reviewers have called it a worthy companion to Ghosts.
Episode 2, “Baby Vampire,” aired October 15 and picked up from the pilot’s closing twist as Max and Emma adjust to their new situation and Charles tries to make a friend at work. New episodes continue Thursday nights on CBS.