On the one hand, Tobias Menzies and Ciarán Hinds, history and the NORTHWEST PASSAGE. On the other hand, horror and ... demonic polar bears? Is it very gory?
So I am a difficult person to ask about gore tolerances because I don't necessarily find disturbing the same things that other people do, but I would say that while there is gore in this miniseries, there is never gore that feels gratuitous, by which I mean gore that feels like it's being shown to get at the audience. The Terror does not subscribe to the fallacy that the past was inexorably grimdark and a story must be the cruelest version of itself in order to be any good. There is a thing that looks a lot like a polar bear and it dismembers some people and devours others and there's plenty of blood on the snow, but the primary horror of the series is not the mutilation of bodies (although in a story whose historical record ended in cannibalism, that is always so to speak on the table) but the cold and the isolation and the paradoxical sense of claustrophobia and entrapment in the middle of seemingly endless wastes of ice and sky, six-month stretches of darkness and light that scramble everyone's clocks and the mounting fear of having forged bravely for Queen and Country into a place that just flat fucking doesn't care about empire or discipline or pluck. For what it's worth, I did not leave the series with a dominant impression of ultraviolence. It has just as many striking moments of grace and beauty and they are done without irony. Also, if you are interested in Tobias Menzies, I had never actually seen him in a major role before and he is ridiculously good as Captain Fitzjames of HMS Erebus. Some of his scenes with Harris' Captain Crozier are the best in the series.
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So I am a difficult person to ask about gore tolerances because I don't necessarily find disturbing the same things that other people do, but I would say that while there is gore in this miniseries, there is never gore that feels gratuitous, by which I mean gore that feels like it's being shown to get at the audience. The Terror does not subscribe to the fallacy that the past was inexorably grimdark and a story must be the cruelest version of itself in order to be any good. There is a thing that looks a lot like a polar bear and it dismembers some people and devours others and there's plenty of blood on the snow, but the primary horror of the series is not the mutilation of bodies (although in a story whose historical record ended in cannibalism, that is always so to speak on the table) but the cold and the isolation and the paradoxical sense of claustrophobia and entrapment in the middle of seemingly endless wastes of ice and sky, six-month stretches of darkness and light that scramble everyone's clocks and the mounting fear of having forged bravely for Queen and Country into a place that just flat fucking doesn't care about empire or discipline or pluck. For what it's worth, I did not leave the series with a dominant impression of ultraviolence. It has just as many striking moments of grace and beauty and they are done without irony. Also, if you are interested in Tobias Menzies, I had never actually seen him in a major role before and he is ridiculously good as Captain Fitzjames of HMS Erebus. Some of his scenes with Harris' Captain Crozier are the best in the series.