VOYAGE of the damned
Colin Farrell leads a top-notch cast in a chilling tale of good and evil as a whaling ship embarks on a treacherous journey to the Arctic wastes
They went to the ends of the Earth to create this astonishing, epic drama – only 22 miles from the North Pole, to be precise. Starring Colin Farrell and Stephen Graham, The North Water is a tense, nerve-racking and haunting saga of men in the most extreme circumstances, battling to survive on a 19th Century whaling ship amid the wastes of the Arctic.
The beautiful, haunting vistas that we see are not the product of computer effects but the real thing: cast and crew ventured further north than any other dramatic production before, to film amid the pack-ice in an area so wild and isolated that armed guards with rifles were stationed around the shoot in case of predatory polar bears.
Adapted from the novel by Ian McGuire, the five-part series tells a story probing the limits of human endurance and our capacity for good and pure, unremitting evil.
It is 1859, and as the whaler Volunteer sets sail from England, it carries a crew whose members are each burdened with their own troubling secrets.
The ship’s new doctor, Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell), seems an unlikely candidate for a job on a humble whaling ship, given his seemingly distinguished previous service with the Army, and there’s something about his explanation for coming on board that doesn’t quite add up.
The ruthless, brutish master harpoonist Henry Drax (Farrell, above) never seems happier than when he’s slaughtering whales and seals – and you wonder how little it would take for him to be preying just as easily on his fellow crew members.
As for the skipper, Captain Brownlee (Graham), he knows something about the mission that he’s keeping from the men: that their aim isn’t to hunt whales, as they believe, but instead that they are to carry out a plan thought up by the shipping-magnate owner, Baxter (Tom Courtenay), that will mean Volunteer is never to return…
Eventually, this voyage of the damned ends with the ship cut off thousands of miles from anything resembling civilisation, leaving each man to find out how far he will go to stay alive and take what he believes is his.
However dark this tale may be, it is illuminated by the jaw-dropping spectacle of the location filming and also the star-power of a formidable cast. The always-superb Graham rises to the challenge, as you would expect – his scheming yet dapper captain is quite unlike any character he has played before – but it’s Farrell who steals the acting honours, as Drax, a diabolical being you will not shake easily from your memory.