It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
This week’s review count has been pretty low, with just a few movies in Movie Monday and the whole of The Terror(US: AMC; UK: AMC UK) to TMINE’s name. Nevertheless, I am a bit behind schedule, after having watched all of that. Still, it could be worse – Harrow is still in the viewing queue, as is Legion, so they’ll have to wait, but I’ll be doing a third-episode verdict on Killing Eve(US: BBC America; UK: BBC One/BBC Three) later in the week and because there haven’t been any other new shows, I’ve caught up with everything else.
So after the jump, with SEAL Team on holiday yet again, a look at an otherwise remarkably full list of the latest episodes of the regulars: The Americans, The Good Fight, Krypton, Silicon Valley and Timeless, as well as the final episode of The Looming Tower. And, oh look – Westworld is back.
Will I ever get round to reviewing Trust? You never know…
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, AMC
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, AMC Global. Starts today
Some things just seem to be cursed. The British expedition in 1845 to find the fabled northwest passage didn’t really stand a chance, given the two ships sent were the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. Sure, they were technologically advanced for their time, with hardened hulls to brace against the ice and carrying railway steam engines to power propellers. But those names? ‘Terror’ and ‘Erebus’, Greek myth’s darkness beneath the world? That was just courting disaster.
Both ships disappeared and later expeditions were unable to find them, although ultimately, it seems like the crews abandoned their vessels after they had become stuck in the ice, after which they tried to make the trek over ice and land to an outpost hundreds of miles away. Ill and running out of food, they might even have resorted to cannibalism to try to survive.
When Dan Simmons wrote his best-selling novel about the expedition in 2007, he must have thought he was on relatively easy territory. The ships had been missing for nearly a century and a half – surely he can write about them safely, imagining whatever he wanted. Yet oddly enough, in September 2014, the wreck of the Erebuswas found, submerged in what is now known as Terror Bay in Newfoundland, Canada. The Terror itself remained unfound, however, despite further investigations.
When a TV adaptation was announced in March 2016, that must have kicked the curse back into life because just a few months later, the Terrorwas found on an island in the middle of Terror Bay – 100km from where historians had previously thought it had wound up. How did it get there? No one’s sure…
Who knows what will turn up, now we have the TV series itself airing.
The Terror and the Erebus
The Terror
For the most part, The Terror is simple conjecture about what might have happened to the crews of both ships, based on the evidence available. It sees Ciáran Hinds (Rome) playing the lead captain of the expedition, Sir John Franklin, while Jared Harris (Mad Men) plays the captain of The Terror, Francis Crozier. Also aboard are Ian Hart and Tobias Menzies (Outlander). Initial episodes focus on the ships’ stranding in the ice, with subsequent episodes showing the events that lead to the abandoning of the ships and then the trek itself, as well as the rescue missions mounted back at home by loved ones, including Greta Scacchi.
However, seemingly just to gee things along a bit, there’s also something out there in the icy wastes of the Arctic. Stronger and bigger than a polar bear and as smart as a man, it’s invisible against the icy tundra and in the eternal night of the Arctic winter. It’s also extremely murderous. But what is it?
