It’s hard to hear Tom Ellis’ name and not think of Lucifer, but almost four years before playing the club-owning master of evil for six seasons, Ellis was protecting his own family from evil in a three-part miniseries. “The Secret of Crickley Hall” premiered on the BBC in 2012 and featured Ellis in the role of Gabe Caleigh, a loving husband and father to three children. One of those children was portrayed by Maisie Williams, taking on the role almost two years after she began playing Arya Stark on “Game of Thrones”
“The Secret of Crickley Hall” is an adaptation of James Herbert’s 2006 novel of the same name. It centers on Gabe and Eve Caleigh (Suranne Jones) and their children Cally (Pixie Davis) and Loren moving into a former WWII-era orphanage one year after the family’s youngest son Cam (Elliot Kerley) disappeared at a park. The family quickly begins experiencing supernatural occurrences from the ghosts of children and staff of the former orphanage.
The Secret of Crickley Hall was a modern day gothic horror
An old English manor, ghosts from the past, and tragic characters are a great formula for gothic terror. “The Secret of Crickley Hall” showcases the typical elements of the macabre, while intermixing grim, human elements. In his review for The Oklahoma Gazette, Rod Lott called the show a “deeply affecting drama.”
The series jumps back and forth between the present day and 1943, when the manor was housing refugee children from London. The owners of Crickley Hall at the time were Augustus (Douglas Henshall) and Magda Cribben (Sarah Smart), sadistic and tyrannical siblings who inflicted cruel punishment on the children under their care.
The show’s interweaving of flashbacks into the present day helps connect the hauntings of the present with the traumas of the past. Fans of Mike Flanagan series like “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor” are likely to find similar charm in this miniseries.