TV Series and Book Review - Midwinter of the Spirit

Is it horror? Is it crime? Is it a supernatural mystery? This genre busting series set in rural Herefordshire involves a crucified body, Satanism and an exorcist, a young girl and her wayward friend. When you mix all this together you get intriguing, dark and creepy for sure, and altogether hugely entertaining.

Bafta winner Stephen Volk wrote the screenplay for the three part ITV series Midwinter of the Spirit, which is based on the supernatural crime novel of the same title by Phil Rickman (1999).  Single mother, priest and newly appointed diocesan deliverance expert (aka exorcist) Merrily Watkins is played convincingly by Anna Maxwell-Martin. Her priest is not a lovable cartoon character from some sit com or a Chestertonian Father Brown, full of certainties and confidence in his vocation. Following closely to the characterisation in the books by Phil Rickman, Merrily is a well-drawn protagonist, full of flaws, doubts and uncertainties and as human as you can get. Her encounters with the dark side, with evil personified, challenge her to the very roots of her being. Called upon by the police to help solve the crime of a murdered Satanist, she turns to her deliverance tutor the Rev. Huw Owen (played engagingly by David Threlfall) for support …

Even if you don’t get to see the TV adaptation, I would recommend you read the book. Slower moving than the TV drama, the author embeds the storyline into the rural Herefordshire landscape in the most captivating manner. The relationship between the mother, a priest, and her agnostic teenage daughter is authentic and convincing, never more so than when the daughter is targeted by the Satanists and seduced into their circle. Merrily’s utter panic aptly reflects the sinister dangers to the younger generation and the challenges of parenthood today. The body count is not as high as in some crime novels, but then death is not the only thing to be feared in ‘Midwinter of the Spirit.’  (Indiana Brown)