Todd Couple

Sweeney Todd is adapted into Prime Video’s very black comedy The Horror Of Dolores Roach

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IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT A STORY idea gets to make the adaptation rounds in multiple media, but that speaks to the delightfully twisted premise of The Horror Of Dolores Roach. Aaron Mark originally developed it as a one-woman show that gender-inverts the 19th century melodrama Sweeney Todd. It became a stage hit with Daphne Rubin-Vega playing ex-con Dolores Roach – who stayed in the title role when it was turned into a Spotify podcast drama of the same name.

Now The Horror Of Dolores Roach is an eight-episode Prime Video horror-comedy series starring Justina Machado (Jane The Virgin) as Dolores, a young woman who takes the fall for her drug-dealer boyfriend and does 16 years in prison. When she gets out, that boyfriend has vanished, and she has no money and no family.

She has to rely on the kindness of Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), the quirky empanada store owner in her old hood, and her skills as a jailhouse-trained masseuse. With Dolores now a fish out of water and livid at her lot in life, she and Luis end up creating a “delicious” way to deal with her momentary bouts of violence.

“It goes into the question of what makes a horrible person?” director America Young tells Red Alert. “Is a horrible person the one who is actively murdering other people? Or is a horrible person the one with all the microaggressions that constantly beats you down, day after day after day, and makes you a non-entity of a person?”