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The North Water is a BBC Two five-part television series, based on Ian McGuire's novel of the same name. The series premiered on AMC+ on July 15, 2021.
Premise
"Farrell plays Henry Drax in the drama, a harpooner and brutish killer whose amorality has been shaped to fit the harshness of his world, who will set sail on a whaling expedition to the Arctic with Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as the ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath. In search of redemption, his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland."[1]
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TV review Culture
The North Water review – a riveting voyage of blood, sweat and beards
Jack O’Connell faces down Stephen Graham in a rousing drama that requires no deep thought and provides fathomless fun
Lucy Mangan
Fri 10 Sep 2021 14.00 BST Last modified on Fri 10 Sep 2021 22.30 BST
It is September, and time for the televisual equivalent of 40 denier tights, sweaters and defiantly unsalady food at last. BBC Two has provided it, in the form of five-part series The North Water, directed by Andrew Haigh and adapted by him from Ian McGuire’s book of the same name.
It’s got just what you need as the nights draw in. The plot is a meaty, satisfying stew that is not going to trouble your mental digestion. We are in Hull in 1859 and we open with a group of boys poking a dead dog with sticks, and a sexual tryst between a man and a lady of the night. The man in question is a black-hearted drunkard named Henry Drax (Colin Farrell, burdened by the kind of wig that should have been outlawed by the Hague by now).
But Drax is also a master harpoonist, which makes him a sought-after man in a Victorian port if nowhere else. He is bound for the same whaling ship – the Volunteer – as the disgraced former army surgeon Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell). The doctor is haunted by his experiences fighting in India and by visions of a small boy who brought him water in the aftermath of battle . . .