There’s an established strain of gothic horror in which a solicitor is dispatched to a lonely house to untangle the affairs of the dead. But where Possession’s Claudia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) parts company with Jonathan Harker in Dracula or Arthur Kipps from The Woman in Black is that her identity as a multiracial woman becomes inseparable from the legacy she’s been sent to unravel.
Her assignment takes her from the UK to Hope Hill, a Jamaican plantation owned until his recent death by a British aristocrat. His son Oliver (Jonny Lee Miller) had expected the estate to pass to him, only to discover it has instead been bequeathed to the enigmatic Cudjoe East (Sheldon Shepherd), a man who appears to have emerged from nowhere.
Both men are, in different ways, uncertain of where they belong. Oliver’s liberal instincts sit uneasily alongside his family’s conservative traditions, while Cudjoe wrestles with internal conflict rooted in age-old wounds. And no sooner has Claudia arrived than history begins to bleed into the present for her too.
As ghostly echoes ripple through the house and long-buried truths about slavery demand to be confronted, the series title begins to acquire a double meaning. At first, it's supernatural possession that dominates, with Oliver seemingly overtaken by the spirit of Charlotte (Bel Powley), the 18th century mistress of Hope Hill who, after turning to dark magic, has found a way to reach beyond the grave.
View Green Video on the source websiteBut as Claudia’s task turns from legal mediation to a fight for survival, she comes to realise that the most enduring form of possession is of an earthlier nature. With the ownership of land, of people and of history continuing to haunt the Black diaspora, the legacy of colonialism proves every bit as unsettling as the restless dead.
Key to that revelation is Claudia’s aunt Mercy (Nadean Rawlins), a Jamaican resident who scratches a living offering spiritual guidance. It’s a trade that appears initially to be little more than performance, but when Mercy guides Claudia through a trance-like journey into the spirit world, her niece finds herself drawn into a devastating chapter of her own family story.
The experience transforms her. Claudia travelled to Jamaica as a lawyer chosen partly because her heritage made her a politically convenient intermediary. Although fully aware that Oliver’s ancestors built their fortune through slavery, she had accepted the task of restoring what was deemed rightfully his, driven more by professional ambition than moral conviction.
But by embracing both her British and Jamaican heritage, she undergoes a profound moral reckoning that leaves her determined to stand alongside Cudjoe rather than oppose him – if she can live long enough to do so.
There are certainly moments of peril: swarms of mosquitos, treacherous floorboards, sinister trunks that really ought to remain unopened and ominous warnings not to "play with things you don’t understand". But writer and creator Karla Crome is less interested in delivering a jolt every few minutes than in exploring the thorny question of reparations. The spirits may conjure the atmosphere, but history supplies the real sense of unease.
That considered approach means viewers seeking an adrenaline-spiking rollercoaster ride may come away with food for thought rather than bitten fingernails. As horror, Possession never quite generates the sustained tension its premise promises. But its slow-burn exploration of the afterlife of empire gives the series a weight that more nuts-and-bolts thrillers often lack. And when it does decide to make you jump, it delivers the most eyebrow-raising, eyeball-related shock since Jaws.
Possession will air on Sky Atlantic at 9:00pm on Thursday, 6 August and can be streamed on the same day on NOW.
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