'Essex Serpent' creates atmospheric gothic mystery

This one is worth catching up on

Kirk Boxleitner | May 26, 20220

Courtesy photo count

Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes seek to assuage superstitious villagers' fears of "The Essex Serpent" on Apple TV+.

So, after reprioritizing my entertainment expenses, I'm subscribed to Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+ and Peacock. Remember when streaming was supposed to be simpler than cable?

I'd been tempted by Apple TV+ before, as it premiered "Ted Lasso" in 2020, followed by series adaptations of "The Mosquito Coast" and "Foundation" in 2021, but it took the hauntingly gothic atmosphere promised by trailers for "The Essex Serpent" to fully sell me on my seventh streaming subscription.

Imagine "The Hound of the Baskervilles" written by Austen and Brontë rather than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and you're close to the flavor offered by this six-episode miniseries adaptation of Sarah Perry's 2016 novel.

After her wealthy, abusive husband dies of throat cancer, Victorian London widow Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes) finds herself free to indulge her intellectual pursuits with the company of her choosing, which includes the equally inquisitive, puckish young doctor, Luke Garrett (Frank Dillane), who treated her husband.

Cora's self-taught passion for natural sciences, and paleontology in particular, prompts her to move her son and maidservant to the small village of Aldwinter, in the English county of Essex, so she can pursue accounts of a mythical sea-serpent.

Cora suspects the "Essex Serpent" might be a type of plesiosaur for whom reports of its extinction have been greatly exaggerated (to swipe from Mark Twain), while the local villagers fear it's a more biblical serpent, especially after a missing girl is found dead in the water.

The trail of Cora's investigations crosses paths with the Rev. Will Ransome (Tom Hiddleston), the initially welcoming and surprisingly well-read village priest, with whom she manages to debate evolutionary theory and religion, convivially and nonjudgmentally.

In spite of Will's warm-hearted wife Stella (Clémence Poésy) sharing his affably tolerant outlook, not all is well in the Ransome household, as Stella is troubled by a persistent cough, daughter Jo (Dixie Egerickx) is shown to be keeping arcane secrets with Naomi Banks (Lily-Rose Aslandogdu), the surviving sister of the dead girl, and Will himself seems troubled by any number of emotions he feels constrained from expressing.

Both Will and Cora find themselves confronted by the village's superstitious parishioners, who question whether Cora has brought trouble into their midst by sticking her nose where it's not wanted, and who grow mistrustful of Will for being too well-spoken and persuasive in his calls for them to heed reason rather than fear.

Three episodes in, and "The Essex Serpent" has not only taken a turn for "The Crucible" as schoolchildren turn on each other with accusations of being in league with what they regard as the satanic "serpent," but it's also acquired the heightened "magical realism" of 1983's "Local Hero," a far lighter film about a remote UK village, that nonetheless exudes a similar frisson of something supernatural lurking just round the next narrative bend.

Even if the "serpent" in question turns out to possess a perfectly plausible and even mundane scientific explanation, "The Essex Serpent" is by no means shy in teasing far darker and more cryptic possibilities, especially as villagers' attempts to ward off the serpent edge closer to pagan rituals than the rites of self-described "God-fearing" Christians (stringing up skinned rabbits on a crucifix seems more fitting for 1973's "The Wicker Man").

Hiddleston remains as effortlessly effective in this as he has in all his roles, and Danes reminds me of why I crushed on her so hard in 1994's "My So-Called Life."

Dillane's privileged frat-bro charm, in a subplot involving his character engaging in arguably reckless maverick heart surgery, makes for an excellent counterpoint to the destitute living conditions to which his working-class immigrant patient is forced to return, even before he recovers from his operation.

This one's worth catching up on.