Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Death And Nightingales’ On Starz, Where Decades Of Tragedy Culminate In A Woman’s Big Decision

Period dramas tend to make themselves accessible through remarkable performances, tight plotting or lots and lots of sex. They tend to need at least two of those elements for viewers to pay any attention. Think of the popularity of Sanditon and Bridgerton; one has great performances and a compelling story, the other has lots of sex. But when two of the three are missing, it makes the show a slog. Does a new period drama on Starz, Death And Nightingales, reach the heights of the more popular period dramas? 

DEATH AND NIGHTINGALES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a darkened farm house, a graphic explains that we’re in a Protestant county of Ireland in 1885, when it was an unbroken part of the British Empire. A woman is looking through a book of poisons.

The Gist: Beth Winters (Ann Skelly) is shown putting together a potion that smells like bitter almonds, and forcing her father Billy (Matthew Rhys) to drink it as he begs for forgiveness. We’re not sure if this is a flash forward or a dream. We do see Beth waking up in the middle of the night hearing a cow bleating in pain. She walks out to the fields as the sun comes up and sees a cow bloated and in pain. She opens a hole in her hide to let out air. It’s then that she looks at the fields and realizes this will be the last day she’s at this farm.

Today is Beth’s 23rd birthday, and she’s looking to leave. When she was 11 she found out while watching her parents have a nasty fight that Billy isn’t her biological father; her mother Catherine (Valene Kane) married Billy when she was pregnant with Beth, with another man being the father. Billy vows during the argument that Beth will never inherit his land, but later that night, he tells her that if she plays her cards right, the estate and a big stash of French gold coins would be all hers.

But the relationship she has with Billy, especially since Catherine died, has been fraught. On more than one occasion he’s gotten drunk and made advances on her, not remembering at all what he did the next morning. She is also in lust with Liam Ward (Jamie Dornan), a worker at the quarry her father owns who also lives on the farm. The maid, Mercy Boyle (Charlene McKenna), has seen this happen and she has become Beth’s confidant because of it.

One problem, the local bishop (Seán McGinley) has told Billy that an investigator will be coming to ask him about Ward and another worker, Frank Blessing (Martin McCann) are despicable people that need to be removed. The bishop goes so far as to call Ward “evil”. Beth overhears all of this.

After Billy fires Liam. he figures he has nothing to lose. When on a romantic rowboat ride with Beth, he proposes. Beth’s plan to escape is in motion.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There isn’t an analogue to the story of Death And Nightingales, based on Eugene McCabe’s 1992 novel. But the feeling the show invokes — especially the message of a woman looking to break free of an oppressive situation in an era where it’s tough to do that — gives us shades of Alias Grace.

Our Take: The three-part miniseries Death And Nightingales, written and directed by Allan Cubitt, first aired on BBC Two in November and December 2018. So it’s taken two-and-a-half years to come to these shores, and after watching the first episode, we’re pretty sure why the show was such a hard sell. It’s not just bleak, but its inscrutable, hard-to-follow narrative makes the show one that pushes a viewer away instead of drawing them in.

/The story ostensibly takes place on the day of Beth’s 23rd birthday, with the events of those 24 hours informed by all of the tragedies that came before it. Her mother’s fraught marriage to Billy and the fact that he begrudgingly raised her even though she wasn’t her child. Catherine’s early death, and her insistence that her gravestone has her family name on it. Her father’s drunken sexual advances on her. It’s been a tough time being under his thumb, and she’s looking to leave. But will going off with Liam solve any problems or make them worse?

That sounds straightforward, right? But because of all the time-hopping, it’s a struggle to keep all of this straight. In addition, there’s another layer, where everyone in the village of Clogher is spying and blackmailing each other. We see it when Bishop Donnelly solicits Billy for a donation to the church after revealing the news that two of his employees are “evil”. But that piece of the story’s puzzle is undercooked in the first episode, as it seems that Beth’s escape is the main topic. Then again, with all the jumping around, even that’s unclear.

Then again, the performances of the three leads are all charming enough to keep a viewer watching. Rhys plays Billy not as a complete a-hole but as a guy with flaws who has treated Beth very poorly over the decade since Catherine’s death. Skelly plays Beth’s struggle to find an identity with equal amounts of strength and vulnerability. And Dornan…, well, he’s there to be roguishly handsome and he does just that.

These performances are what might sustain a viewer past the first episode, in hopes that the storytelling straightens itself out.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Liam and Beth sleep together, perhaps cementing the same fate her mother had. We do see Beth patting her belly as she gets dressed on her birthday, so there’s something to that.

Sleeper Star: At the end of the episode, we see Liam and Beth plotting to steal the French gold on the night of her birthday, the next time Billy is likely to drink to excess. In the last scene, after packing and hiding her suitcase, Beth looks straight ahead, knowing the day she’s facing.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing stands out, but we’ll do the Ugly American thing and mention the thick Irish brogues, which sound authentic but will make you turn on the subtitles if you harbor any hope of understanding what’s going on.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite the performances by the miniseries’ leads, Death And Nightingales is just too boring and inaccessible to really get into; by the end of the first episode, we were even more in the dark about the story than we were at the beginning.

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 Death And Nightingales On Starz