Somerset, 1894. When Colin Morgan’s pioneering psychologist Nathan Appleby inherits the family estate, he arrives with Charlotte Spencer’s forward-thinking photographer Charlotte and plans to modernise the land. The soil has other ideas: each of the six hour-long episodes drops a new apparition into the fields, from a murdered schoolmistress to Civil-War Roundheads re-enacting a forgotten battle, while Nathan’s own grip on reality frays. Horton Court’s honeyed stone and the surrounding Gloucestershire valleys supply a sun-drenched gothic stage; the camera lingers on rusted scythes, beetle-swarmed wheat and the Applebys’ new-fangled steam thresher as if farming itself were the real haunting.
Writers Ashley Pharoah and Robert Murphy treat every ghost as unfinished village business, not mere jump-scare fodder. A teenage girl’s possession stems from an unbaptised ancestor; five suffocated workhouse orphans point to a tin-mine cover-up; a drowned ‘witch’ still whispers instructions to a schizophrenic boy. The score by Bristol duo The Insects threads Elizabeth Fraser’s spectral rendition of “She Moved Through the Fair” through scenes of harvest ritual, binding folk heritage to family guilt. The final twist folds time: a 21st-century paranormal researcher, revealed as Nathan’s descendant, has been meddling across centuries, proving the Applebys are both tenants and authors of their curse.
BBC One and BBC America simulcast the series from 28 June to 2 August 2016, then quietly cancelled it. One series, six episodes, no compromises: a closed circuit of hauntings that ends where it began, with the land claiming its own.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 2016
Created by: Ashley Pharoah, Matthew Graham
Writer(s): Ashley Pharoah, Robert Murphy, Simon Tyrrell
Producer(s): Eliza Mellor
Cinematography: Suzie Lavelle, Matt Gray
Main Cast
Colin Morgan as Nathan Appleby
Charlotte Spencer as Charlotte Appleby
David Oakes as William Payne
Chloe Pirrie as Lara
Pooky Quesnel as Agnes
Robert Emms as Peter
Joel Gillman as Jack
Sarah Counsell as Lizzie Merrifield
Malcolm Storry as Gideon
Harry Peacock as Smith
Isaac Andrews as Charlie
Nicholas Woodeson as Reverend Matthew Denning
