There’s not enough story in “The Essex Serpent”
You notice its cinematic qualities in the first episode of “The Essex Serpent,” a series debuting with two installments this week on Apple TV+.
It’s deeper into the six-episode adaptation of Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel of the same name that it hits you: This may have been better as a movie.
A work of British-australian production house See-films, “The Essex Serpent” stars longtime “Homeland” fixture Claire Danes and Loki himself, Tom Hiddleston, with “Fear the Walking Dead” alum Frank Dillane in a significant role, as well. It is set late in the 19th century in Perry’s native Essex, where, yes, a large, otherworldly serpent is suspected of being responsible for terrible things befalling a small village characterized by marshes and other attractive landscapes.
In the show’s production notes, one of the producers speaks of how often an adaptation of a novel slices out too much of its “richness.” Instead, this nearly five-hour translation is given too much room to breathe. You can’t escape the feeling that its writers — including creator Anna Symon (“Indian Summers”) and series director Clio Barnard (“Dark River”) — didn’t have enough story beats for six television-sized
chapters.
Still, “The Essex Serpent” — a story ultimately about love that traffics in the conflict between science and religion — has a lot to offer, starting with the performances of the aforementioned trio.
Danes portrays Cora
Seaborne, a brilliant London woman with scars both emotional and psychological from her abusive husband. Fortunately for Cora, he is dying and refuses the treatment offered by a doctor, Dillane’s Luke Garrett, leaving her free to explore passions including archeology and paleontology — and Luke to become smitten with her.
She is mostly oblivious to the nature of the ambitious medicine man’s interest in her — and in
that of another person close to her — but is quite interested in picking his brain. He is hoping to perform the world’s first successful heart surgery, and, with great interest, she asks him what it’s like to cut into another living human.
“I’m curious, that’s all,” she says.
“It’s exciting,” he answers, adding that it’s also terrifying and that each procedure is a leap of faith.
Cora’s curiosity involving reports of a “sea dragon” possibly being responsible for the killing of livestock — and worse — in the Essex village of Aldwinter compel her to venture there, against Luke’s objections.
Cora has a not-so-pleasant first encounter with the village vicar,
Will Ransome (Hiddleston). It’s clear from this meeting, however, that there’s a certain spark between these two.
And they regularly will be drawn to each other, despite the fact he’s happily married — to the mother of his two children, Stella (Clémence Poésy, who, like Dillane, is a veteran of the “Harry Potter” film series) — and despite him being a man of faith and Cora a woman of reason.
As the series progresses, Will must come to the defense of Cora, whom villagers begin to blame for the continued horrors plaguing the small, tight-knit community.
Her life is complicated by
Luke, who quickly comes to visit and stay at her cottage, also the temporary home of her young son, Frankie (Caspar Griffiths), and her servant, Martha (Hayley Squires, “I, Daniel Blake”), a socialist who adores Cora but grows increasingly frustrated by her status and yearns for a more significant role in the world.
Cora’s general obliviousness to almost all feelings but her own may have made her more of a frustrating figure if not for the deft work of Danes, who manages to keep the character uniquely charming throughout the tale. Danes does not work all that often, but her work is always memorable.
Hiddleston has the less-challenging job, but the dependable actor — whose notable credits outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe include “Kong: Skull Island” and “The Night Manager” — also keeps Will within the realm of the sympathetic, even when he’s making what are perhaps not the best of choices.
And to Dillane’s credit, it’s not easy to know how we should feel about Luke, the show’s most complex character.
Like many limited series, “The Essex Serpent” drags in its middle episodes, but things do pick up in the finale — after one very bad night for two of the primary characters in the series’ penultimate installment — with multiple story elements flowing together at the reasonably satisfying conclusion.
The charitable read on “The Essex Serpent” is that it has the sensibilities of both a novel and a British series, both of which tend to possess different rhythms than those of many American television productions.
And some viewers are sure to enjoy its generally slow pacing — and all that breathing the story is allowed to do — but others may find their attention drifting more than once.
Ultimately, a movie’s two-hour runtime may not have been enough to do justice to Perry’s award-winning second novel. Perhaps four episodes would have been the sweet spot.
Regardless, Symon, Barnard and company didn’t quite find it.