Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, said Freud. But darlings, let me tell you – a snake is never just a snake. And certainly not in The Essex Serpent (Apple TV+), the new six part miniseries adapted by Anna Symon from Sarah Perry’s 2016 bestselling novel of the same name.
At the tail end of the Victorian era and recently liberated by her wealthy, abusive husband’s death from cancer, young widow Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes) abandons London society and moves to Aldwinter on the edge of the Blackwater marshes to pursue a much more fulfilling life as an amateur paleontologist in comfortable clothes. With her she takes her devoted maidservant Martha (Hayley Squires) and her autistic (in modern day terms) son Frankie. Her husband’s former doctor, Luke Garrett (Frank Dillane), becomes a friend – and, in time, a contender at least in his eyes for her affections – and visits often.
