If you’re of a certain age, you might remember what became known as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when everything from Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal was seen as promoting Satanism.
Peacock has announced it’s capturing that era in a drama series called Hysteria!, written and directed — most appropriately — by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the guys behind the upcoming role-playing game-inspired adventure Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
According to the streaming service, the series will be a “coming of age” story that follows a group of high school misfits “as they exploit the growing hysteria around teen occult activity.”
Peacock teases, “When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the ‘Satanic Panic’ of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported ‘supernatural activity’ triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.”