Something's happened here, something that's been buried for a long time...Gather ye rosebuds and clench ye bumcheeks, for here we be on the 1940s Suffolk coast, where there be dark rumblings in the cornfield. "Where's thaart Lucy gone?" gurgles Mrs Felwood (Jill Halfpenny), ruddy-cheeked matriarch of Lightfields Farm. It's a cheery place, populated by turnip-faced yokels, well-meaning dray horses and tittering mimsies in diaphanous tea dresses doing their bit for the war effort by letting rectangle-skulled US servicemen air-bum them in the woods. Answer, pivotally, comes there none, snarks The Guardian's Sarah Dempster...
A primetime supernatural drama, Lightfields (tonight, 9pm, ITV) is a five-part follow-up to 2011 primetime supernatural drama Marchlands, in which the residents of a house in rural Yorkshire were haunted by the ghost of Alex Kingston's dungarees. If you recall, that story neatly wrapped up all the loose ends when it concluded, thus inconveniently presenting something of a dilemma in terms of continuing the action. However, the producers have found a clever way to carry on the series; copy the format, but use different characters, setting and time periods. This time, the supernatural hokum emanates from the mysterious death of poor naive Lucy (Antonia Clarke), the fallout from which weaves itself through the lives of the farm's future residents.
Like its predecessor, the drama flits between three different families in three different eras, each of which is stuffed with instantly recognisable period details: 1940s (aforementioned tea dresses, yokelry), 1970s (cheesecloth blouses and the words "JETHRO TULL" written on a poster), and modern day (digital radio and Kris Marshall swearing in a leather blouson). In 1944 the harvest is looming and the Felwood family are hard at work on the farm when 19 year-old Eve (Dakota Blue Richards) arrives. She has been evacuated from London and wants to help out and do her bit for the war effort. A friendship blossoms between her new family’s daughter and Eve but this is put in jeopardy when Dwight (Neil Jackson), a dashing American airman, comes into their lives. It is Eve who meets him first but then a chance meeting between him and Lucy triggers lies and deceptions between the two girls. Then, one fateful night, the hay barn catches alight. The fire rages and it is too late when they realise that there is someone in the barn. As the family and local community struggle to come to terms with thaart Lucy’s death, Eve believes it wasn’t just a tragic accident. She knows Lucy must have been meeting someone at the hay barn and having established it wasn’t Harry she knows who it must have been. Motivated by this niggling suspicion she searches in the smoldering wreckage of the barn and finds Dwight’s petrol lighter. With this proof she confronts Dwight but outsmarted by him she is left once again with nothing but her own suspicion.
By 1975 Lightfields has stood empty for many years when Vivien (Lucy Cohu) and her teenage daughter Clare (Karla Crome) arrive from London to stay for the summer. Vivien stayed in the area when she was evacuated there during the war but struggles to remember anything about that time. As they settle into their holiday Vivien’s distant behaviour starts to concern her daughter. Unbeknown to Clare something has started to stir in Vivien’s repressed memory since their arrival at the farm, something unsettling. But that is not all; their arrival has triggered something else, something has woken in the house. The two women are not alone. Clare remains worried about Vivien and is relieved when her dad arrives for the weekend. He believes Vivien is on the verge of a breakdown, something that has happened before, and wants her to go home and get treatment. But Clare wants her mother to be given a chance to work things out her way so he returns to London alone. A discovery that Vivien visited Lightfields as a girl unsettles her. Her memory remains just out of reach but as information drips in and the ghostly presence becomes more prevalent she starts to fear that her memory holds a terrible secret.
In 2012 a new generation of Felwoods have recently bought Lightfields. Barry and Lorna live there with their grandson, Luke, and Barry’s elderly and infirm father, Pip, has just moved in. Pip lived at Lightfields when he was a boy and this is the first time he has returned. He is disturbed to be back after all these years and won’t talk about his childhood on the farm. Pip knows his return has awakened something in the house but he refuses to acknowledge it. What he doesn’t know is that there is someone else who is only too willing to see and communicate with this ghostly presence. A moment when Luke goes missing and is found sitting by a grave in the churchyard makes Pip realise that the ghost is communicating with his great grandson. The grave belonged to Lucy Felwood and it is getting harder and harder for Pip to keep up his pretense that she never existed. They are then distracted when Paul turns up with shocking news; he is going to fight for custody of Luke. Barry and Lorna have looked after Luke since he was a baby and the thought of losing him now is unimaginable.
This is not, it is safe to say, demanding stuff notes Dempster. Doors slam, mysteriously. Lights go out, inexplicably. There is the line, "You look worried. Have you been here before?" over the sound of a lorry backing into the living room and dumping another pile of exposition next to the 1975 sofa. Meanwhile, characters arriving at Lightfields Farm for the first time stand at the front gate and, looking up, say "Lightfields Farm" in the firm but slightly wistful tone one might adopt when introducing a deaf labrador to a clergyman. "Odd," you might think. "We've already seen Lightfields Farm and thus are fully aware that this is Lightfields Farm and not, say, a granary loaf or the Tardis." So why do people keep telling us it's Lightfields Farm? Could it be that the producers are unsure we've been paying attention? Possibly. Or could it be that they think we're a bit thick? (Cue ghostly children's laughter, and a crash zoom on AN Viewer going "boh"…) Yes. But then, this is the problem with approximately 93% of all modern "horror" fare: it assumes the viewer is a spanner. All the dots have already been joined. There's nothing for us to do other than sit back and wince at the cheesecloth and the glare of the daylight in which most of the drama is shot. In fact, never has such a creeping sense of unease been so effectively communicated in bright sunlight, thinks The Guardian's Julia Raeside.
The recent revival of the TV ghost story gathered pace with The Secret of Crickley Hall last year, but oh for a genuine chill in these days of intrusive underscores and suppurating prosthetic torsos and whatnot. Something like the 1968 MR James adaptation Whistle And I'll Come To You, say, in which Michael Hordern is terrorised by a flapping bed sheet making slowed-down cow noises. Or the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special (yes, the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special) where the final shot of a hooded monk standing motionless in a graveyard was accompanied by the sound of eight million belts being unbuckled as the nation darted, screaming, to the nearest bog, its buttocks clapping like castanets. This was properly terrifying, unshowy stuff that relied on atmosphere and brainwork, not panicky strings and half of this generation's answer to the Gold Blend couple swearing in a leather blouson.
Here, though, the only real jolt that viewers are ever likely to experience is the realisation, circa the bit where a massive barn goes on mysterious CGI fire, that they haven't tuned into a conceptual edition of A Place In The Country. Now, nobody turns up to ITV on a Wednesday evening expecting Cannibal Holocaust. But, really, is it too much to ask for a supernatural drama that doesn't treat viewers like gurgling yokel dunderskulls? Our bumcheeks can 'andle it, honest.
Lightfields was written by Simon Tyrrell and, like Marchlands, is based on a US pilot The Oaks by David Schulner for Twentieth Century Fox Television. Cherry Gould was the producer and ITV Studios’ Kate Lewis was the executive producer. The five hour-long episodes were directed by Damon Thomas and were filmed in August in Hertfordshire and West Sussex. Lightfields was commissioned for ITV by drama commissioning team Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes. "We’re delighted to build on the success of Marchlands with another highly original take on the format," said Haynes in an ITV press release. "It’s a very distinctive addition to our slate."
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