From the creator of Luther we’ve got a classic autumn thrill-fest in ITV’s The Sister. Intense from the off, the series starts with Nathan (Russel Tovey) about to wash some pills – they don’t look like multivitamins – down with some vodka.
But before he gets the chance, he’s interrupted by Bob, a creepy long-haired man, fresh from the pages of a Dickens’ novel, announcing in an eerie voice, “they’re digging up the woods.” Now here at Must TV we find deforestation as noxious as the next paper-free publication, but Nathan takes it to a whole new level and throws up. But it turns out, he’s not so worried about the wildlife being dug up, rather something else that’s buried there. Here we launch into a back and forth of flashbacks and memories which tell us that it’s a body that’s buried, and it’s got something to do with the dynamic duo of Nathan and Bob. The Sister is packed with horror clichés – dark and rainy woods with dramatic dialogue, a haunted protagonist and a weird villain stirring the pot. But all these things, whilst making it a bit contrived, make for some solid autumn watching.
Lucy Mangan in The Guardian calls The Sister “truly haunting,” saying “A large part of this success must be laid at Tovey’s feet.” The Telegraph’s Anita Singh disagrees, saying, “the drama jolted into life whenever Carvel was on screen” and “turned this hokum into evocatively sinister fare.” The Independent’s Sean O’Grady comments that show creator Neil Cross “has said that his aim in this adaptation of his novel Buried is ‘to make viewers sleep with the lights on,’” going on to say “in [his] case, it certainly worked.”
First shown October 2020. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image, or by clicking here.
