Gothic lovers? What better week of the year than this one to revisit dark stories that feed on secrets about the major streaming platforms? The late autumn call attention to titles that explore the unsettling charm of the gothic tale, distancing themselves from the most violent narratives and going deeper under the skin, aiming for eerie locations cloaked in fog and driving rain, with secrets long buried that resurface from the shadows. The gothic genre has been explored on the small screen many times, offering dense atmospheres where the line between reason and superstition becomes exceedingly thin. For those in search of hypnotic and suitably eerie stories for Halloween week, here are three TV series to catch up on.
What to watch for Halloween: 3 Gothic TV series among cursed mansions and secrets
Servant
conceived by Tony Basgallop but produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Servant is set in Philadelphia, or more precisely in a sumptuous mansion in the city where the entire story revolves. That beautiful mansion gradually becomes a living prison, saturated with unconfessable secrets and pains never fully processed. The protagonist is Dorothy, a television journalist who has recently lost her infant son, Jericho. To help her cope with the grief, Dorothy receives as a gift a hyperrealistic reborn doll and hires a young nanny, Leanne, whose presence in the house seems to awaken something in that doll, which appears to return to life. At that point her husband, concerned, decides to investigate Leanne’s past. Premiered for streaming in 2019 on Apple TV, it comprises four seasons.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Mike Flanagan never shies away from a horror challenge, and on Netflix he offered The Fall of the House of Usher, a miniseries drawn from the work of Edgar Allan Poe but set in modern times, blending that family tragedy in a Succession-style with inexplicable supernatural terror. The protagonists who drive the narrative are the twin siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher, leaders of a pharmaceutical empire whose foundations rest on unspeakable afflictions. The past returns to knock on their door when Roderick’s children begin to die suddenly one after another. The story is firmly anchored to the Usher family’s old childhood home, which becomes a stage for omens and a physical symbol of a dynasty rotting from within, overwhelmed by greed and guilt, and even more by a dark pact struck years earlier that could spell its ruin. Released in 2023, it is a one-season miniseries distributed on Netflix.
The Essex Serpent
Adapted from the eponymous novel by Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent is a 2022 British miniseries distributed on Apple TV and set in England in 1893. Comprising six episodes, the period drama follows Cora Seaborne, a widow of a violent husband with a passion for paleontology who decides to leave behind everything — city, home, high society — and move to a remote village in Essex. Her aim is to uncover a mythic sea serpent said to haunt the local waters. Upon arriving in the village, she forms a meaningful bond with Will Ransome, the local pastor who assists her in her quest. The leads of this venture are Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston.
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