The Essex Serpent Review: The Blackwater / Matters of the Heart (Season 1 Episodes 1-2)

The Essex Serpent is Apple TV+’s first real attempt at a period drama, and if its first two episodes are anything to go by, it’s a pretty great effort. The series isn’t perfect by any means—it’s painfully slow-moving at points—but its moody, atmospheric setting, thoughtful explorations of faith and belief, and haunting Gothic romance vibes will certainly captivate many a viewer.

(Plus the array of fantastic, cozy-looking knitwear is to die for.)

The story is based on Sarah Phelps’s celebrated 2016 novel, which considers the creepy marshes and dank rivers of the Essex countryside to be as much a character as any of the humans in the story, and mixes superstition, faith, and science to form a dank cauldron of disbelief and obsession. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether anyone ever proves whether this supposedly magical animal is real or not—this is a story that’s full of enough monsters without it.

It’s been a minute since Claire Daines has done a period piece, but she’s excellent as newly widowed Cora Seaborne, balancing her deep and abiding love of the natural world with her distrust of any divine being who might have made it—the same force that let her marry a man who, quite literally, promised to break her and remake her in the image of his choosing, before branding her with a fireplace poker.

Cora’s tragic backstory is easily discarded in the series’s first episode with her husband’s convenient death (one which Cora lifts not a finger to either ease or prevent and we truly love that for her), leaving her free to pursue her true love: Science and naturalism. Drawn by stories of a mysterious sea serpent terrorizing the Essex Coast, she heads out in classic nosy white lady fashion to investigate and possibly educate the locals about plesiosaurs (which is what she assumes this is.)

There’s something appealingly weird about Cora as a heroine. Despite her obvious fashion sense, she’s often presented as so distinctly non-feminine, with her love of dead things and dirt, and her frequently non-maternal nature. (The obvious emotional distance between her and her son is  something I hope the series explains further at some point.)

She’s a far cry from what the people of Aldwinter likely view as a proper or acceptable woman, and one has to assume that at some point they’re going to try to punish her for that.

As a result, Cora’s arrival in the town of Aldwinter is met with some suspicion—and no small amount of disbelief. (Which makes a certain amount of sense; again, these aren’t people who are used to Cora’s idea of what womanhood and female autonomy mean.)

Reeling from the disappearance and death of a local girl, the villagers are growing increasingly convinced that the presence of the supposedly monstrous serpent is a divine punishment of some type. Maybe the snake is eating those who are the most ungodly, maybe they need to repent, maybe it’s all meant as a test for the rest of them who remain. Who can say?

Pretty much immediately, Cora runs into vicar Will Ransome (Tom Hiddleston at his most handsomely broody) who not only doesn’t believe in the serpent, he’s apparently convinced that if he just tells these people they’re wrong for doing so enough eventually they’ll start to agree with him.

I feel for Will trying to hold on to some vestige of rationality in a village that so explicitly wants to believe in the supernatural, but he’s really got to try mixing up his bedside manner. 

The pacing of these two episodes—and the broader story they represent— is glacially slow, which probably is meant to visually represent the fact that this is a cerebral tale as much as it is an actual mystery to be solved. 

As a result, we get to see Cora and Will have a lot of long talks, which serves the dual purpose of giving Hiddleston and Daines swaths of dialogue to work with as they tramp around the muddy marshes and debate philosophy, thoroughly illustrating that while these two may disagree on key tenets of science vs. faith, they’re not as dissimilar as they want to believe. 

The Essex Serpent is at its best during these moments, as Cora insists a logical explanation for a giant sea serpent is not just possible but likely, even as her determination to prove it puts her at direct odds with the bulk of the villagers, who find it easier to believe in deserved punishments for a vengeful God.

Will, for his part, is a man of faith—he believes in miracles and things which passeth human understanding—but he cannot accept the idea that something supernatural is at work here, or that the God he loves would punish his children by literally sending a monster to eat them. For him, he’s stuck at a similar moral crossroads, just one that asks how he can best help the community he serves if they no longer truly share a belief system.

The final sequence of “Matters of the Heart” feels uncannily like every production of The Crucible you’ve ever seen, as children start shaking and foaming at the mouth while they accuse their peers of essentially being instruments of the devil. (As Cora is, quite literally, stuck in the middle of it all.) How do you logic that kind of behavior away? And what does it mean that everyone in the room was so eager to participate, so quickly?

The Essex Serpent struggles most obviously when it turns its focus away from Cora, Will, and/or the havoc the insidiously spreading belief in a potentially mythical creature is doing to the residents of Aldwinter

I’m not sure who thought that anyone would care about Luke Garrett’s quest to become the first doctor to perform some form of open-heart surgery, but it’s all very boring and seems so very disconnected from the main narrative.

There’s something worth poking there about the idea that, then and now, men are encouraged for chasing their dreams while women’s passions are somehow seen as lesser, but the show seems content to not look at Luke’s entitled pseudo-courtship of Cora very closely, even as his failed attempts (that kill people!!) are lauded and her interests questioned.

Equally dull is the show’s interest in Martha (that’s Cora’s maid) and her socialist politics and how she’s planning to change the world one 

Now that Cora’s essentially moved to Aldwinter, here’s hoping we can phase out the London bits entirely.

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• This show is beautiful to look at. Just gorgeous haunting imagery throughout.
• The opening scene of “The Blackwater” certainly makes it look like a giant snake is heading straight for Gracie, is all I’m saying.
• What is the deal with Will’s wife? 
• I also do not care if Luke Garrett’s manservant (Simon?) is into Martha in any way. 

What did you think of the premiere of The Essex Serpent? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of The Essex Serpent stream Fridays on Apple TV+.

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