If you like the supernatural and Victorian gear you will very possibly love this series, but corsets, oil lamps and spooky goings-on leave me cold. I was surprised to see that the co-creator of the brilliant Life on Mars was the guiding spirit behind this series. LoM was witty, thoughtful, satirical and sometimes laugh out loud funny, in a good way; but in the present series the ideas, and humour, are thin on the ground. Perhaps the writers reckoned that if they encouraged thought or laughter in their viewers, we might not take their absurd plot lines seriously enough. The props and frocks department have done their stuff competently, but it is all too Tess of the Durbervilles without Hardy's talent for characterisation. We have seen the threshing machine and traction engines bringing modernity to a largely medieval English rural scene too many times before, for this to be anything but a tired rehash of work done better by other hands. Someone must have believed that adding a ghost-busters theme to the usual mix is enough to lift the whole thing out of mediocrity. I have to report that they were mistaken.

There is something very sinister about possession in children that has spawned countless movies over the decades. you will be seriously mistaken if you think this is one of the many..... It started out as a well done period drama with some scares thrown in for good measure, as period dramas go, it was a bit slow for the first 2 episodes, but by episode 4 the pace picks up...and from then on it is just an awesome journey. twists like you never would have guessed. it boldly goes where no horror series has gone before. this is like Downtown Abbey/Poldark meets the Grudge/the others meets life on Mars meets back to the future??

I personally found this captivating and well worth watching.The setting is a lovely location with history oozing thru the storyline. the characters are solid, 3d and fully believable. the directing and background make you believe the story and accept the circumstances.it drags you into the plot and makes you want to know what ever happens next.I cannot recommend this enough.Unlike another critic I felt that the music enhanced the plot and added to the air of mystery.It all becomes explained in the last episode and suddenly it all makes sense.well worth watching.

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.