Previewing The Essex Serpent 

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

I’ve written before about how there was a void in my TV schedule when Penny Dreadful ended, which was briefly filled by FX’s Taboo. I do love a genre show that’s steeped in the past, and most recently, The Alienist was a scratch for that itch. This Friday, Apple TV+ enters the chat with The Essex Serpent, which is much more Victorian than genre, but has Tom Hiddleston in period dress, so you take the win.

The series also hinges on love geometry, of which y’all also know I’m not a fan. See above regarding Hiddleston. Over the course of the six-episode season, we follow the story of widowed single mother Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes)–her name is emblematic of her interests–a gilded but also horrifically abused woman of elevated social status in 19th century London. When she has the good fortune for her bastard husband to die, she’s suddenly unshackled from all the societal niceties and freed to pursue her own interests.

Fairly immediately, she hones in on news articles about a possible prehistoric serpent allegedly roaming the marshes of Essex. A naturalist at heart, she packs up her young son, Frankie (Caspar Griffiths), who’s equally prone to fixations, and his governess/her companion and friend, Martha (Hayley Squires), and moves to the remote village to seek it out.

Her newfound friend, esteemed surgeon Luke Garrett (Frank Dillane), initially indulges her impetuous decision and starts a commuting friendship back and forth to see her. Unaware of the reality of her marriage, he also warns her not to do things in haste while she’s grieving. His BFF and colleague, George Spencer (Jamael Westman), finds his own friendship with Martha.

While the allure of the serpent is the initial draw, Essex also holds a mystery surrounding the disappearance of a young woman attributed to the animal–and how that affects her sister, Naomi (Lily-Rose Aslandogdu), and the rest of the town.

As Cora dives into her research, she develops an initially fractious friendship with the local pastor, Will Ransome (HIddleston), who’s a friend of a friend back in London. They fight and make up over matters of faith and science and that gets precarious because Will is very married to Stella (Clémence Poésy), and has a family.

The dynamic throughout the show is that Will, Martha, and Luke are equally enthralled and tormented by Cora at their own peril, which means viewers must lean all the way into her appeal as presented. While Cora gets a bit of a pass for the circumstances of her escape and rebirth, there’s a certain point where you may or may not buy into the degrees to which the people in her orbit accept her sometimes petulant and often selfish behaviors.

We do get a fair time with those other characters to see how they do (or don’t manage) in her absence. And we see the general fear and loathing of the townspeople against the outsider they deem a threat precisely because she is fearless in the face of something that terrifies them, that they cannot understand and have not seen but believe to be true.

It’s beautifully lensed, while also capturing the bitter elements of the region and the lifestyle that the townspeople deal with, surviving without all of the trappings and privilege that Cora has. Clio Barnard directs the series, adapted from Sarah Perry’s novel by Anna Symon. Barnard and Symon executive produce with Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Patrick Walters.

The Essex Serpent premieres its first two episodes Friday, May 13th, globally on Apple TV+, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday through June 10. Here’s a sneak peek.

Photos and Videos Courtesy of Apple TV+.