Hayley Squires’ sincere and astute performance makes you look forward to spending more time with the character, and we do in the second episode as she campaigns for safe housing and an end to the London slums. The characters may not say it out loud as such, but they’re all touched by the fear of the future that goes hand-in-hand with change.Ĭora’s entourage are son Frankie, who has autistic traits and loves collecting almost as much as his mother does, and Martha, her salt-of-the-earth but educated and inquisitive companion. The late 19th century is backdrop to the action, a time of great social change, with all the old traditions and certainties in flux. Fascinated by newspaper reports of an enormous Essex Nessie, she packs up and sets off to seek out this prehistoric monster. Her hobby/obsession, or hobsession, is natural history. You wonder if Luke has ever heard the story of Icarus.Ĭora isn’t hanging around to get saddled with husband number two. Despite killing patients left and right, he’s very comfortable calling himself a genius. He’s keen to have a go at cardiac surgery in a hospital that looks like it barely believes in germ theory. He’s a big-shot pioneering surgeon, despite looking all of 17 years old.

Could this be a reaction to Covid lockdowns, where people found themselves longing for freedom so desperately, so totally sick of each other’s company they could have cheerfully fantasied committing murder?Ĭora’s rather ghoulish flirtation with Dr Luke Garret seems to be progressing nicely. We’ve had a rash of shows recently dealing with spouse loss in any number of ways, presenting the survivors all along the spectrum of victims to villains. Having outlived him, she’s now working out what exactly to do with her new freedom. In London we meet Cora (Claire Daines with an arresting strawberry blonde hairdo), a brittle young widow, traumatised by a particularly nasty abusive relationship. How can Sarah Perry’s fantastic lyrical prose be reconciled in a TV script? The award-winning book, published in 2016, was a darkly sensual musing on faith, rationality and temptation brooding and shadowy, but an absolute page-turner too. This is the long-awaited six-part adaptation of Sarah Perry’s best-selling novel The Essex Serpent, directed by Clio Barnard (riding high after the recent big screen success of Ali & Ava ).

AppleTV begs to differ with their new offering. It’s a known fact that Gothic tales are meant for winter nights.

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