Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Black Narcissus’ On FX, Where Nuns Try To Make A Haunted Himalayan Castle Into A Convent

Black Narcissus is an adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel of the same name, about a group of nuns trying to make a haunted Himalayan castle into a convent and school. The castle’s ghosts drive the nuns to temptation that they’ve sworn to ignore. Is that enough to sustain a three-hour miniseries? Read on for more.

BLACK NARCISSUS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A stormy, foggy night. “Mopu, Himalayas, 1914.” We pan into a castle on a very high cliff.

The Gist: In 1914, a woman, possessed or crazed, goes up to the castle’s bell tower and screams to the sky. Twenty years later, in 1934, a group of Catholic nuns are getting ready to leave their church in British India to try to create a convent and school out of the Mopa castle. The castle was given to the church by General Toda Rai (Kulvinder Ghir). The mission will be led by Sister Clodagh (Gemma Arterton), an ambitious nun who is confident that she and her sister nuns can succeed where a previous group of monks from Germany failed; the monks were driven out in five months.

On the first day the nuns are there, Clodagh meets Mr. Dean (Alessandro Nivola), an emissary from the general who helps maintain the castle. Dean tells Clodagh that she and her group shouldn’t have shown up at the so-called “house of women,” but Clodagh brushes off Dean’s brusqueness and observation that other religions live with each other in the area with little disruption; it’s the Jesus followers who cause a lot of the problems.

When the general, along with his nephew Dilip (Chaneil Kular) show up, he relates to Clodagh that he hopes the nuns can rid the castle of its bad karma; 20 years before, his sister Srimati died while living in the castle. Clodagh herself has flashes or memories of moments of passion that she had before she became a nun, and the creepiness of the place is particularly affecting Sister Ruth (Rosie Cavaliero), who is as ambitious as Clodagh but much more skittish.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Are there any shows and movies with nuns and/or priests that don’t involve some variation of ghosts, spirits, terrors or possession?

Our Take: This is not the first adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel of the same name; a 1947 film starring Deborah Kerr was the first time the novel came to the screen. This time around, Black Narcissus has been expanded into a 3-hour miniseries by Amanda Coe and the BBC, and while it’s got the standard BBC tentpoles of great locations and fine acting, we were left not only cold by the first episode, but thoroughly bored.

Much of the first hour is set up, even though we do see some of the desires of the nuns creep into their thoughts, but there’s so much exposition, so many times where someone tells Sister Clodagh that they shouldn’t be there and that the monks didn’t last long, it was almost comical.

The idea is that these nuns are going to give into the temptations that the ghosts inhabiting the castle, namely the general’s sister, will prod them into having. The sisters are so chaste that they’re not even allowed to shake hands with men. So the idea that they’re going to start to act on the temptations that cross their minds is a long road for them to travel.

But, as scary as the show and the castle are supposed to be, we don’t feel any of that until nearly the end of the first hour, and even then, we’re not sure what’s actually going to drive the nuns out. And, after the first episode, we don’t much care.

Sex and Skin: Besides the moments of temptation that cross Clodagh’s mind, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: While Clodagh tends to a bleeding worker, Ruth tries to tell her “I saw her face! I saw Srimati!” Clodagh grabs her with her blood-stained hands and tries to slap some sense into her. Suddenly, we see Ruth go pale, with red-rimmed eyes.

Sleeper Star: One thing we’re wondering about is what the presence of Jim Broadbent as Father Roberts and the late Diana Rigg as Mother Dorothea is going to mean as the series moves along. You don’t bring on two big names like that just to have them be in tiny scenes in each episode. But if that’s the case, it seems like a waste.

Most Pilot-y Line: Because the source material is over 80 years old, it feels like the depictions of the general and his family were rooted in the stereotypes of the era. Perhaps that was unavoidable, but we felt vaguely uneasy watching some of those scenes.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Black Narcissus just doesn’t have enough story to latch onto and pay attention to for three hours. It’s slow and talky, and it doesn’t have any characters that you want to follow by the end of the first hour.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Black Narcissus On FX