Oddly unconvincing: Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent reviewed

Having now watched it to the end, I would say that Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is by far the best TV drama I’ve seen in at least the last year: superbly acted and directed, ingeniously plotted, refreshingly free of annoyance. Oh, and I’d like to apologise to Mick Herron, author of the original novel series, which I now intend to devour. I’d say his understanding of the intelligence services is at least as jadedly insightful as John le Carré’s and I was quite wrong about his treatment of the ‘far-right’ threat. He gets it totally. The man is a genius.

But those hoping that Apple TV+ is going to supplant the increasingly rubbish, excruciatingly modish and content-lite Netflix as the new go-to subscription channel may be in for a disappointment. Certainly, the two new dramas I watched this week left me cold.

The first was The Essex Serpent, an adaptation of Sarah Perry’s bestselling novel about a sea monster – or is it? – that terrorises the populace of the Essex marshes in the 1880s.