The North Water; AMC+ Based on: The North Water by Ian McGuire

The North Water; AMC+
Based on: The North Water by Ian McGuire

If there’s one thing I can’t get enough of in this life, it’s tales of doomed 19th-century whaling voyages, so when Ian McGuire published his gory nautical nightmare The North Water back in 2016, I gobbled that bad boy up like it was Ahab’s favorite leg. Easily the most brutal work of fiction I’ve encountered since Blood Meridian, The North Water is the story of a disgraced former British Army surgeon in search of redemption, a depraved harpooneer with a taste for murder, and the ill-fated journey of the whaling ship Volunteer as it sails out into the white darkness of the Arctic Circle in 1859. In this BBC/CBC miniseries, Jack O’Connell plays the fallen doctor, Stephen Graham plays the ship’s weary captain (who has been instructed to scuttle the Volunteer for the insurance money), and Colin Farrell plays the animalistic harpooner Henry Drax. Now, I’ve only seen the first episode (which, mercifully, softens Drax’s character introduction somewhat), but I’m happy to report that The North Water is damn fine prestige whaling fare—briny, brooding, and brutal. A word of caution, however: if watching a bestial Colin Farrell shoot, stab, and bludgeon to death a colony of adorable seals as they undulate on their fat little tummies across the Arctic ice sheath isn’t your idea of a good time, well, maybe skip the last ten minutes of episode one…  –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor in Chief