Paul Evans If I'm honest I didn't think the BBC had the capacity to make a series like this, nothing to do with production or calibre, just that a series such as this feels less mainstream somehow.It's fantastic from start to finish, you get a horror vibe from it, it's full of intrigue, suspense and manages to get you on edge. Beautifully filmed, it oozes quality, the cinematography is sublime, and the music is perfect throughout, it really added to the overall 'gothic horror' feel of the show. Fantastic costumes, which looked incredibly authentic. I got vibes of the recent Woman in Black and The Others, a very definite positive.Colin Morgan goes from strength to strength, he has a definite quality, and somehow seems to have matured into an actor of some presence. Entire cast were great, Charlotte Spencer and Kerrie Hayes particularly good, as was the all too brief appearance of Fiona O'Shaughnessy.It's disappointing that a second run was not commissioned, particularly in light of the ending of the final episode, but as I said earlier, it may not have been 'mainstream' enough. I have a feeling this will be a series remembered for years to come, 9/10

BitterBrownSugar The story at the beginning like a simmer fire to narrate in detail. Audiences should has patient to taste it. Every detail is matter and hinted the clues for the ending. Especially the ending twist is surprising. The writer,Ashley Pharoah, is brilliant. Every scene has been arranged like painting on canvas, beautiful and natural. Not to mention each actor acting in place. Colin Morgan as Nathan Appleby is a pioneer psychologist who is carrying the pain inside deeply by losing his son. It's a complicated character for him as a big challenge. But Again, he accomplished a perfect job which was so engaged the character and dealing well with this tangle role. Charlotte played his wife also express the delicate feeling to support his husband. Overall the whole crews are connected and played well with sewing a splendid landscape.

vivnista I found the show incredibly disjointed. I was more than happy with the time periods which definitely held my interest but the story lines just did not fit together well. It was all a bit thin for my liking. I did find the acting brilliant and the soundtrack was appropriately eerie but it just wasn't enough. I didn't understand the ending at all, were they on about the first wife and if so how come nobody else had mentioned it?!!! The twist was good but again didn't make sense as in the present day there would be mention of this strange machine found back in the 1800s. All in all if you have nothing better to do then give it a go with low expectation and then you may enjoy it.

Leofwine_draca THE LIVING AND THE DEAD is a six-part BBC miniseries about ghostly goings on and the man who investigates them. The central characters are a farmer and his wife who arrive at a rural corner of historic England and soon discover that the countryside is awash with supernatural events and dangerous elements. From that premise I knew I had to watch it, but I soon discovered that this is the usual kind of generic BBC nonsense that proves the broadcaster has lost the plot these days when it comes to drama programming.Visually the series is very similar to POLDARK albeit with a WICKER MAN influenced folk song soundtrack full of pagan themes and feelings. Yeah, the music gets pretty intrusive at times, almost reaching PEAKY BLINDERS levels of interruption. Elsewhere, the usual clichés of the ghost story genre are explored, from the generic possession stuff to hints of witchcraft, curses, and the odd cheesy death scene (the bit with Steve Oram being run over is physically impossible). Cast-wise, the main actor is the kid from MERLIN all grown up, but the problem is he's very wooden and uninteresting - can't the BBC give new talent a chance? There are some good character actors in support including Nicholas Woodeson (ROME), David Oakes (PILLARS OF THE EARTH), and Kerrie Hayes (THE MILL), but they don't have a lot to do.THE LIVING AND THE DEAD might be well shot but many scenes are rather dark and dingy and there's even a woman in a negligee wandering around in the best Hammer tradition. At times it feels like nothing more than a mildly supernatural MIDSOMER MURDERS copy, but in the last couple of episodes things start to really lose the plot with some significant post-modernist developments seemingly copied from Hollywood fare like THE OTHERS or American HORROR STORY. And this is the problem with BBC drama in the 21st century: a team of writers with little to no experience in the horror genre, copying what's gone before instead of trying something new. The BBC needed to employ a single experienced writer like Stephen Volk in order to do this subject matter true justice.