(Contains spoilers)
The first episode was marvellous, and it persuaded me to watch the rest. Sadly, it was downhill thereafter.
The setting and cinematography are excellent throughout, and create a compelling atmosphere of late Victorian creepiness. The actors do a businesslike job, although the delivery is a touch too theatrical in places. The dialogue, considered scene-by-scene, is mostly convincing. You could take a ten-minute snippet from more-or-less anywhere in the series, and it would look like something I could happily watch.
And yet...
It doesn't make any sense -- that's the problem. There seems to be an understanding among contemporary writers -- for any medium -- that as soon as a story involves supernatural elements, there's no need for it to have any kind of internal logic. Let's suppose we accept -- for the purposes of the plot -- that people can sometimes experience events from the past or the future. Many good movies have worked with that assumption. But how does that explain a bunch of Victorian farmers finding a wrecked car? And how does it explain the various mysterious deaths? These seem to be attributed to some kind of evil spirit; but what is the connection between evil spirits and time travel? None that is made clear, for sure.
At some point we learn that a bunch of Parliamentarian troops massacred everybody in the village during the Civil War. That fact just comes out of the blue, with no preceding references, just when the writers thought it would be nice to have some additional violence, presumably. Such events don't seem particularly plausible from a historical perspective, but even less plausible is that it doesn't seem to surprise anybody that the ghosts of the long-term roundheads come back to repeat their villainy. It just seems par for the course.
The male lead character is ostensibly a psychologist, or some form of mental health professional. There was a good opportunity for a plot based on the tension between science and superstition; but that opportunity was ignored, and it wouldn't have made any difference if this character had been a banker or a painter.
Similarly, the show alludes to the impact of industrialization on a farming community, but this plot element is not developed at all -- Mr and Mrs Squire buy a steam engine, which is sabotaged. We never find out by whom, or for what purpose, and it plays no further part in the story.
And the ending... what's that all about? It just comes completely out of left field with no connection to anything that has gone before.
Just think of all the odd plot elements that are crammed into this short series:
- time travel - forgotten mines harbouring dark secrets - rationality and superstition - ghosts of various sorts - possession by unquiet spirits of some sort - the impact of industrialization on a rural community
Any one of these elements could have been developed into a compelling story, with real character depth. All the right things were there -- the location, the atmosphere, the cinematography. However, it just looks as if the writers jumbled everything together, and then put some additional ghosts in for good measure.
Many movies are not easily understood on a single viewing. In the best examples, we get an idea that, although the plot might not be simple, or obvious, there is one in the writer's mind at least. In this case, however, it's clear that even the writers didn't care about the story, beyond the immediate relationships between the main characters.
So it's a soap opera with ghosts and time travel. Very disappointing.
