✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
TV

The Essex Serpent, Apple TV+ review ★★★★★

13 May 22 – 13 May 23, ON APPLE TV+

Claire Danes, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Squires star in Anna Symon's new Apple TV+ adaptation of Sarah Perry's novel The Essex Serpent

By Euan Franklin on 12/5/2022

Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes in The Essex Serpent, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes in The Essex Serpent, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
The Essex Serpent, Apple TV+ review 3 The Essex Serpent, Apple TV+ review Euan Franklin
Episodes watched: 6 of 6

It’s a pleasure to see Tom Hiddleston outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the doomed conversations about The Next James Bond. Wedged inside the hit-or-miss comic book factory, you occasionally forget he’s a strong, Shakespearean marvel on his own.


And yet, his introduction in Anna Symon's new period drama The Essex Serpent – adapted from Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel – is perhaps as theatrical as the two franchises mentioned above. In a display of rustic masculinity, he wrestles a sheep out of a marsh in late-Victorian Essex. He’s scratched and covered in mud. But he’s not a Heathcliffish brute: he’s the Reverend Will Ransome of the nearby parish, Aldwinter. And thus, he joins the growing list of alluring and fictional men of the cloth.


His actions are observed and assisted by the visiting, aristocratic Londoner Cora Seaborne (a fittingly expressive Claire Danes). Cora’s abusive husband has recently died, freeing her from a loveless marriage. She reads in the paper about the legendary Essex Serpent, an elongated beast that swims around the marshland around Aldwinter. The series opens on the Serpent's first supposed victim, who asks forgiveness for her sins before being taken.



Photo: Apple

Unable to sit still, Cora ventures to Essex with her socialist housemaid Martha (Hayley Squires) and potentially autistic son Frankie (Caspar Griffiths) to investigate the Serpent as an amateur naturalist. Turning from enemies to friends to polite admirers, she and Will develop a will-they-won't-they as the latter's wife Stella (Clémence Poésy) waits at home. Initially, The Essex Serpent performs as vital viewing, and its weekly episodic structure (Apple's standard practice) will wrap you into the mystery.


The absorbing historical context embraces the triangular friction between science, religion and superstition – each represented by Cora, Will, and the frightened villagers. Cora believes the beast to be an example of ‘escaped evolution’, Will denies its existence altogether, and many of the village folk retreat into mass delusion following a number of marshland casualties.


Director Clio Bernard maintains a close eye on the main players with cinematographer David Raedecker (The Souvenir), crafting such intense and beautiful shots of their faces. You’re invested: the characters are built with Dickensian idiosyncrasies as well as seductive stares, rising to a gripping love hexagon.



Photo: Apple

With Bernard's grim and gloomy atmosphere, Symon writes this like a detective drama where the killer is potentially a plesiosaur. The series weaves together the watery history of Francis Lee’s period romance Ammonite with Robert Eggers’s spiritually scary The Witch and The Lighthouse (even sharing ominous seagulls and possessed children). This navigation of many genres at once – folk horror, monster thriller, period romance – turns into a daring juggling act… at first.


The series collapses in the second half, events turning preposterously melodramatic and weirdly irrelevant. As if bored by the rising paranoia in Aldwinter, the story abandons the hysterical village in favour of the metropolitan comforts of London. Various social and political subplots open up, and you wonder why you're here after the enticing, rural tone had been established.


And then those threads, tugged for hours, snap with disappointing results: culminating in a mediocre, anticlimactic compromise, over which the characters have very little influence. To have unsatisfying answers after waves of mythological ambiguity is perhaps the point, but shows The Essex Serpent isn’t as daring or fascinating as it appears – like finding an apparently valuable fossil that crumbles into dirt.


The Essex Serpent is available on Apple TV+ from Friday 13 May, with episodes dropping weekly.



What The Essex Serpent, Apple TV+ review
When 13 May 22 – 13 May 23, ON APPLE TV+
Price £n/a
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
Zadie Smith new novel, The Fraud, to be released in 2023, photo Justin Holler
An A to Z of trends for 2023
Helena Bonham Carter in Nolly, ITVX (Photo: ITV)
What to watch on TV this week

Editor's Picks

Helena Bonham Carter in Nolly, ITVX (Photo: ITV)
What to watch on TV this week
Sasha Lane and Alison Oliver in Conversations With Friends, BBC Three (Photo: BBC)
Conversations With Friends, BBC Three review
Colin Firth and Toni Collette in The Staircase, Sky Atlantic (Photo: Sky)
The Staircase, Sky Atlantic review
Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things 4, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)
New to Netflix UK: May 2022
Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh in Killing Eve season 4, BBC (Photo: BBC)
Killing Eve season 4 finale, BBC review (SPOILERS)
Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, and Noah Schnapp in Stranger Things 4, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)
Stranger Things 4, Netflix: trailer, release date, photos, cast, plot
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

The Essex Serpent

Tom Hiddleston

Claire Danes

Period Drama

AppleTV+

TV

2022

You might like

  • Jim Broadbent, Hiftu Quasem and Jack Davenport in Ten Percent, Amazon Prime Video (Photo: Amazon Studios)

    Ten Percent, Amazon Prime Video first-look review ★★★★★

  • Margherita Mazzucco in My Brilliant Friend season 3, Sky Atlantic (Photo: Sky)

    My Brilliant Friend, season 3 episodes 5 - 8, Sky Atlantic review ★★★★★

  • Regé-Jean Page and Phoebe Dynevor in Bridgerton, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)

    4 reasons why you should watch Bridgerton

  • Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto in WeCrashed, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)

    WeCrashed, Apple TV+ review ★★★★★

  • Bel Powley and Emma Appleton in Dolly Alderton's Everything I Know About Love, BBC One (Photo: BBC)

    Everything I Know About Love, BBC One review ★★★★★

  • Secret Cinema presents Bridgerton. Photo: Luke Dyson

    Secret Cinema presents Bridgerton review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×