I was enticed from the moment I saw the eerie opening credits. I can't fault this series, every minute I was gripped with a new twist, amazing performances and a remarkable story line. Although some twists were cliché; you can easily forgive and forget, thanks to something new and exciting happening within the next minute. I read in a bio that the series was classed as a "drama", and a drama indeed it was. If you were expecting a gory horror I'd turn away now. As this series should be engaged with the expectations of a great story line drama... Even if the series still managed to spook me in parts and have me on the edge of my seat nearly all the way through.The story line was truly captivating. The juxtaposition was easy to follow and fun to see a new time period. The only reason for me not rating the series a '10' is simply because I wanted to know a little more about the boy, for which the bio of the series stated was one of the main focus points.A must watch for everyone!

The Secret of Crickley Hall is a clichéd but creepy Haunted House story.Eve (Suranne Jones) and her husband Gabe (Tom Ellis) to move to a house in the country with teenage daughter Loren (Maisie Williams) for a short time some months after their young son went missing.Crickley Hall past the village of Devil's Cleave harbours its own secrets. An orphanage in the past, we learn via flashbacks to 1943 when it was run by the cruel and sadistic Augustus Cribben (Douglas Henshall) and his sister Magda (Sarah Smart). The orphans lived in dread.Eve hopes that Crickley Hall will heal their grieving but its dark past brings it own haunts and there is a malevolent presence.The opening episode certainly showed a lot of promise and creepiness but the subsequent episodes started to get silly and the plot more hokey. Suranne Jones is very effective as the grieving mother and there was a lot of melancholy with the climax but the series never excelled.

The Secret of Crickley HallThis ghost story from beyond the pond toggles regularly and frequently, without notice, across the pale between Then and Now. (Mixed idioms are intentional.) Then is at a private orphanage in 1943 Devon, at a time when children were bused from London to escape The Blitz. Primeval's Douglas Henshall plays the evil headmaster. We start out, however, in the Now. Mother ("Eve Caleigh", played by Suranne Jones) and her five-year old Son have a special, even psychic, connection. Son disappears from the playground when Mother falls momentarily asleep. Mother is disconsolate for months thereafter. Approaching the one-year anniversary of Son's disappearance, Father ("Gabe Caleigh", played by Tom Ellis) gets a job out west (in the aforementioned Devon of the novel), and the family takes the opportunity to move, in hopes of escaping the sad memories at home. The house they choose is the now-abandoned orphanage of Then; and Now, of course, it's haunted…by ghosts of children and staff who died in a long-ago "flood". (The couple have two other children, both girls, one preschool; and the school bus which collects the older one for classes is labeled, "Manchester", per the location of filming.) Once ensconced in the haunted house, Mother finds and reassembles a screw-driven toy top – like one I had as a child, but mine was less fancy than the one used here – and she uses it to reconnect psychically with her lost son, believing him to be still alive. From here, she employs extraordinary means to find him, beset all the while by Henshall's haunting. This U.K. miniseries is an enjoyable Halloween treat, and I was happy to be able to watch the entire thing as a three-hour TV movie on BBC America the day before its scheduled U.K. broadcast. (Note: This review is dated October 29 in my files, indicating the original scheduled airing in the U.K. It was not yet available for voting on IMDb then, hence my tardiness in submitting this review. December dates on previous reviews suggest that the U.K. presentation may have been delayed a month beyond the original scheduling.)

THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL is a three-part miniseries made by the BBC and broadcast on BBC1 in November 2012. Sadly, like with other recent literary adaptations (GREAT EXPECTATIONS and THE TURN OF THE SCREW for example), this seems to be a missed opportunity, merely going through the motions rather than trying hard to pass as quality drama.I'm a fan of James Herbert, although I haven't read the particular novel this adaptation is based upon, so I can't comment on it. However, this miniseries covers very familiar 'haunted house' territory, jutting between modern-day family woes and a story involving an orphanage in WW2-era Britain.The story fails to work very well because none of the actors seem very convinced in what they're doing. Suranne Jones bags the meatiest role of the grieving mother but I never felt much sympathy for her character's plight, indeed she's rather uninteresting when it comes down to it. The producers try hard to build interest by casting seasoned performers in supporting parts (Donald Sumpter, David Warner, Susan Lynch, GAME OF THRONES' Maisie Williams) but none of them contribute their best work.The three hour running time means that much of the storyline is repetitive; there are only one or two incidents that occur in the 'past' storyline yet the child abuse stuff is repeated over and over again for lengthy stretches; not even a hamming Douglas Henshall can save it. The modern-day stuff is littered with plot holes and the ghostly stuff is silly and slightly twee rather than genuinely haunting.A missed opportunity then - a shame, because once again it could have been great had more care between taken with the quality of the script and performances of the cast.