I saw the advert for this three part drama, based on the book by James Herbert (The Fog), and thought it looked like an interesting watch, and two or three recognisable faces in the cast, so eventually I started watching. Basically a year has passed since young Cam Caleigh (Elliot Kerley) went missing and life for his London based family has not been the same since, and with this anniversary coming up, and with a short contract in the North of England, mother and wife Eve (Suranne Jones) agrees with father and husband Gabe Caleigh (Tom Ellis) to move for a while, with teenage daughter Loren (Maisie Williams), to a house in the country. They arrive at Crickley Hall, a large estate past the village of Devil's Cleave, the family hopes the time away can heal their relationship and grieving, but it seems that the hall is not the right place to be, as it has a dark past and possibly unwanted inhabitants. Through flashbacks to 1943 we see Crickley Hall was formerly an orphanage run by Augustus Cribben (Douglas Henshall) and his sister Magda (Sarah Smart), but all the children living there lived in fear or the people running the place, especially Augustus because he was highly brutal beating many of them, and new tutor Nancy Linnet (Olivia Cooke) was appalled by it. Nancy tried to help the children get away from the abuse, and young Percy Judd (Iain De Caestecker) tried to help her as much as he could to stop it or report to the police or whatever, but she could have not have counted on a young man helping Augustus to murder her and throw her body down the well under the hall. Back in present day, the ghosts haunting the estate are causing Eve especially stress and paranoia; she believes the spirits are trying to tell her that Cam is still alive and she is desperate to find him at last, Gabe is obviously trying to convince her she is wrong, despite him and Loren encountering strange things themselves. We also see some of the people from or knowing about Crickley Hall at the time have grown older and are still living in the village, including former grounds keeper Percy Judd (David Warner) who still suffers the bad memories, psychic medium Lili Peel (Susan Lynch) who may be able to summon or talk to the spirits, elderly Magda (Annie Kelly) surviving sister of Augustus, and parapsychologist Gordon Pyke (Donald Sumpter) who is eventually revealed to be the boy who pushed Nancy down the well after her murder. The cast all do their parts well, with Jones being the typical female victim of trauma, Ellis being the sense of reason without any belief, and the appearance of The Omen star Warner is welcome, the story is interesting enough to keep you watching, I was hoping to be shocked or freaked out, but it was creepy certainly, and even though the son is discovered dead in the end there is still the tension before the final conclusion, an alright supernatural drama short series. Good!
Review of The Secret of Crickley Hall
