AMC’s Miniseries of a British Arctic Exploration that Goes Horribly Wrong
Dan Simmons, a Hugo Award winning author who has given us Hyperion, Song of Kali, and The Abominable wrote The Terror, a novel based upon the true tale of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, in which Captain Franklin was commissioned by Britain to chart a Northwest Passage through the arctic reaches of Canada. Now this story is being produced as an AMC television Series. The famed expedition did not go well. At all. As in, all 129 members of the expedition died. Apparently nobody thought that two ships named The Terror and Erebus (a Greek diety of darkness) wasn’t a bad omen. Simmons provided the story with a counterfactual twist: They ran into a monster! As if battling the arctic cold, foot poisoning, and starvation that led to cannibalism wasn’t bad enough!
This show looks like it’s going to hit all the right buttons for me. I am admittedly an age of sail fan, appreciating the work of Patrick O’Brien (Captain Jack Aubrey stories) and C.S. Forester (Horatio Hornblower stories). I think it’s the epaulets on the shoulders and the fore-and-aft bicorn hats.
The cast is cut from the Game of Thrones cloth, with familiar faces like Ciaran Hinds (Mance Rayder from GoT, now playing Captain John Franklin), Tobias Menzes (Edmure Tully from GoT, now playing Captain James Fitzjames ), and Jared Harris (Anderson Dawes from The Expanse, now playing the key role of XO Francis Crozier.) The ships, costumes, and settings are spectacular, and AMC’s attention to detail is on full display in this trailer. AMC may just have found a great genre series, just as they close out The Walking Dead for the year.
The Terror premieres on Monday, March 26. BRRRRR!!!