THE ONLY WAY OUT IS ESSEX (THE THIRD DAY - SUMMER)

 

No-one should fault HBO, Sky Atlantic and Sky Arts for their ambition this autumn.

One of their big tentpole dramas this autumn is the jointly commissioned 'The Third Day' - a three part, jey black psychological horror tale about a religious cult on an island in Essex.

Divided into three productions, Felix Barrett and Dennis Kelly's miniseries is set over three seasons - Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The first, Summer, boasts Jude Law as its lead and spans over three episodes.

The second, Autumn, is an immersive 12-hour "as live" theatrical event set in Osea Island filmed in one take. 

The final instalment, Winter, is three episodes long with Naomie Harris heading up the cast.

In addition to Law and Harris, 'The Third Day' has Emily Watson, Paddy Considine and Katharine Waterston involved.

Law plays Sam, the owner of a garden centre who has arranged to meet a planner he has agreed to bribe.

The problem is the £40,000 he agreed to hand over in cash has been stolen after his business was broken into.

Sam stops off at a forest on the mainland for a private act of remembrance - we later discover his young son disappeared in the area and is feared dead.

While he is walking in a forest listening to Florence and the Machine, Sam witnesses a teenage girl being assisted by a boy as she tries to hang herself.

Sam is able to prevent the suicide attempt and decides to drive the teenager, Jessie Ross's Epona home.

Home, it turns out, is on Osea Island and it can only be accessed by a causeway during low tide.

When they get to the other side, there appears to be a festival being planned on the island.

Locals wearing robes with fish head masks walk the streets and a stage has been erected for a gig.

Rather than go to her family home, Epona insists they head to a local hotel and pub instead where Sam informs the landlady Emily Watson's Mrs Martin and her husband, played by Paddy Considine, about Epona's suicide attempt.

Desperate to get back to the mainland, Sam is cut off by the tide and takes up Mr Martin's offer of a room which is "on the house" because of his good deed.

However they have also let the room out to Katharine Waterston's Jess, a cynical US anthropologist who is studying the festival and the preoccupation of locals with a Celtic ritual based around the God, Esus.

Some of the locals - most notably, John Dalgleish's Larry and Epona's father, Mark Lewis Jones' Jason - seems unhappy about Sam's presence.

Sam is also troubled by a sense of déjà vu even though he insists he has never been on Osea.

He also has a nagging concern for the safety of Epona.

But can he get off the island before events spiral out of control?

Barrett and Kelly's first part of a trilogy unfolds in the most unsettling way possible, ramping up the sense of dread will old school horror chills.

Some fans of the genre will revel in the obligatory references to classics such as Nic Roeg's 'Don't Look Now,' Robin Hardy's 'The Wicker Man,' Ari Aster's 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar,' Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' and Alan Parker's 'Angel Heart'.

Others, however, will find these nods exhausting, irritating and a little too obvious. 

Nevertheless, it has to be acknowledged that over the course of three episodes, the director of 'The Third Day: Summer' Marc Munden and his cinematographer Benjamin Kracun do a really effective job ratcheting up the tension and menace.

Kracun, in particular, conjures up some vibrant, striking images - the rich hues of green and red he accentuates give the story a horror fantasy quality much like Darius Khondji's work on Neil Jordan's 1999 psychological horror 'In Dreams'.

Munden elicits strong committed performances from his cast.

Law is as good as you'd expect, depicting a man increasingly under strain as he begins to question why he has wound up on the island.

Considine keeps the audience guessing about the true motives of his character.

Waterston, Dalgleish, Lewis and Ross play their part but it is Watson who steals the show as a tough talking landlady who appears to recognise Sam from the past.

One weakness of the show is it's very heavy handed bastardisation of Christian narratives and imagery.

Esus is a very obvious reference to Jesus, as is the title's reference to resurrection, inviting the viewer to question the whole validity of religious faith.

But sometimes it all seems too much on the nose.

Kelly's screenplay also relies on "you're a stranger round these parts" cliché and skirts very closely to full on parody.

However the cast and Kracun's creepy visuals just about keep the vessel from capsising.

If 'The Third Day: Summer' is just a sinister, gory appetiser, the question begs how audiences will stomach the marathon 12 hour main course ahead of them with the autumn instalment?

Will it leave them sated or feeling sick?

It is a huge test of the audience's endurance but 'The Third Day: Summer' probably does just about enough to encourage the horror die hards to take that challenge on.

('Third Day: Summer' was broadcast on Sky Atlantic on September 15-29, 2020)