Loosely adapted from Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, which has been adapted many, many times, including the faultless '61 film version The Innocents, and more recently, the thoroughly mediocre The Turning back in the halcyon days of January. Its title overhaul is to tie it to showrunner Mike Flanagan's brilliantly chilling series from last year, The Haunting of Hill House. A fact that's hard to miss, given how it transplants the majority of the cast from Hill House, and sees Flanagan (and his set designer Patricio Farrell) once again building a creepy home from a scratch. Also present: a fright of ghosts (Fact of the Day: 'fright' is the collective noun for ghosts). Not so present: all that many frights.
Moving The Turn of the Screw's action from 1898 to 1987 - bringing it just close enough to the present to channel a little Stranger Thing's-like nostalgia, but not so up to the present that the story has to contend with mobile phones, which have been poking holes in horror plots from the moment they were invented - the series trundles along quite happily at first. In quick succession, we're introduced to the bright, bubbly and haunted (because of course she is) American abroad Dani, who's made the new governess at Bly; her employer, the scowling and haunted (yes, he's haunted too) Henry Wingrave; his reliable but haunted (it's probably safest to assume everyone's got a haunted vibe, okay?) housekeeper Hannah; a brooding and enigmatic gardener, Jamie; the ex-(very ex) governess at Bly Manor, Rebecca; Henry's raffish, Scottish valet, Peter; amiable chef, driver, and dogsbody Owen (who actually seems pretty chipper and non-haunted); and last but not least, the quirksome, almost irksome, Wingrave siblings, Flora and Miles.
Over the show's nine episodes, most everyone gets a solid hour dedicated to their backstory. Although the scares are rarer than in Hill House, they're no less effective when they come around. Where the torrent of jumps were in the previous series, we instead get a greater focus on slow-burn mysteries and a nicely chilling atmosphere. It's only when we get into Peter and Rebecca's soporifically tedious love story that things start going awry. Partly, because it feels like it'll go on beyond the heat death of the universe, but mostly because of over familiarity. The Turn of the Screw is an old, old tale, and plenty have liberally stolen from James' original story over the last one hundred plus years, so neither Peter and Rebecca's doomed affair, nor most of the other characters' backstories, will surprise anyone. But what really sinks the show is England. More specifically, keeping it set here, rather than shifting it across the pond. Now I should point out that I have a tin ear for accents. I could meet someone with the thickest Glaswegian accent going and I'd still ask bemusedly "So... where you from?". And I'm married to a Glaswegian. And yet even I can tell that the stiff upper lip accents being put on by most of the cast are like nails on a chalkboard, and would be deemed 'a bit much' by the Monty Python boys. But a special mention needs to go out to the worst offender, Oliver Jackson-Cohen's Peter. His supposedly Scottish accent is like listening to your 8-year-old nephew doing a bad Gerard Butler impression - but with a foghorn.
Despite these issues, and they are neither few nor slight, Flanagan still knows how to orchestrate the hell out a scare. Unfortunately, with the scares so rare over the nine-hour stretch, I'm betting many will bail before they get to some of the show's best jumps.
6/10
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