The dynamics and characters of those in charge and of those they command are impressively dense and detailed. They are stuck in the pack ice because Franklin ignored his advice to play it safe and keep some slack in the unforgiving system. The ever-magnificent Jared Harris plays Francis Crozier, a dour man disappointed in love, held back in his naval career by his Irish heritage and 10 times the seaman Franklin will ever be. The only real kink in this perfect analogy to our benighted county’s lockdown situation is that the voice of reason, intelligence and tough decisions that might actually work is the vainglorious leader’s second-in-command rather than a committee of medical and scientific advisers. The enabler of all his weaknesses is his cabinet – I mean, sidekick – Captain James Fitzjames (played with customary elegant malevolence by Tobias Menzies). He prefers to be liked than take difficult or unpopular decisions and so seems set to doom the men under his care to unnecessary suffering and death. He has succeeded in life through confidence and showmanship and is better at delivering bombastic speeches than listening to reason or executing a plan of action that will save his men. Now, the tale of two ships and their men trapped for two winters in unyielding pack ice, bored, isolated and made increasingly paranoid and unstable by the uncertainty of rescue … well, it has more resonance, let’s say.Īpropos of nothing, I note that Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) is a man disastrously underqualified for his position as expedition leader. The series could be regarded with detached interest then. It’s an adaptation of Dan Simmons’ 2007 bestseller about the imagined fate of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which went missing along with 129 crew in 1845 as Sir John Franklin led them in a search for the fabled North-West Passage through the Arctic.

The Terror (BBC Two) was originally broadcast by AMC/BT in the Before Times – the halcyon days, did we but know it, of 2018.

The terror simmons