Bruce Campbell returns next month for Season 3 of Ash vs Evil Dead

Our favorite TV borg in 2016 was Bruce Campbell as he teamed up with on-screen father Lee Majors in the Starz television series Ash vs Evil Dead. Reprising his role from the Evil Dead film series and Army of Darkness, the chainsaw-armed suave hero Ash is back next month for Season 3 of the dark comedy-meets-horror gore fest. Starz releases a new teaser for the 2018 episodes this week, a mock beer ad featuring Ash as a smarmy 1980s guy cruising a lounge.

Fake brand Shemps Beer (think the TV-pervasive Morley cigarettes or Magnum’s Old Dusseldorf beer) was featured in the Starz series first seasons. The “Shemp” in “Shemps Beer” is Campbell’s and Evil Dead and series co-creator Sam Raimi’s term for all the back-up characters they needed to pull in for their low-budget original film Evil Dead, a play on The Three Stooges’ third member of the comedy team who replaced Curly, Shemp Howard, who also died and was replaced but with his previous stand-in–a “fake Shemp.” Hence “Shemps” as the series fake beer.

Accompanied by Cutting Crew’s memorable radio song, Campbell is back being the Bruce Campbell we loved in the Evil Dead films and series, and as star of Burn Notice, and in Sam Raimi’s Spider-man movies (the best part of those films, actually) and in his series Jack of All Trades, and in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and in Xena: Warrior Princess, and in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and in The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.