Alt-Media: Undertow: The Harrowing

Storyglass, 2020

Podcasts are weird. I was listening to this on Spotify, where it was being released week to week. But that is now, and according to IMDB this came out in 2020, but likely on another release platform? So, if Spotify just got the rights to it, why not just release as one big season?

Also, while listed on Spotify as the "current season" of the horror series Undertow, it is not listed under Realm's (production company) list of podcasts, but only listed under Storyglass's collection. So, podcasts license podcasts from other production companies to round out their seasons, and then release on different platforms at different times? Sort of like Netflix will say "Netflix Presents" on something they just snatched up from a provider in another country?

Having heard the trailer for this audio drama at least 900 times as I listened to other podcasts, I guess.... advertising works?

The story is told as the recalling of events, while Sergeant Jackie O'Hara (Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey) is being interrogated about a tragedy she was part of, from which she only recently recovered.

Toll Mòr is an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. Sergeant O'Hara, a police officer assigned to the island, is brought there in the face of a coming hurricane level storm, by a call from farmer Frank Guthrie. O'Hara is familiar to the islanders, not one of them, but friendly enough to be teased. She works hard to build a relationship with them, which is why she took a boat there even though a storm was brewing.

Frank tells her that the Ward family, neighbour to him, a family he doesn't exactly get along with, has been quiet / absent for a few days. The horror they discover in the farmhouse, the slaying of the family in a ritualistic fashion, shakes the two of them, especially when soon after, a figure burns down the house, and all evidence, and then just stands by. Added to the tragedy is that the young girl called "Twig" (Sorcha Groundsell, Shetland), daughter to the Wards, is missing.

The figure, who calls himself Kai (Stewart Scudamore, Carnival Row), is your typical horror/mystical antagonist -- a giant of a man with unruly hair and beard, a body covered in scars, muttering constantly about Biblical happenings and events. He's a stranger who the islanders do not trust, and the murders are unlike anything they have ever experienced, and there is a storm raging, which has cut them off from the mainland, physically, and as they soon discover, communications-wise as well, as the towers have been sabotaged.

Being a serial drama, things unfold at a nice pace. There are only eight episodes so it switches to action very quickly. Unlike the audio book I just listened to, I didn't have to wade through the author's long, banal attempts at characterization. What matters here is the story. And what is unfolding on the island is indeed Biblical.

SPOILERZ.

Kai is one of those mystical immortals that pop up in fiction. He is Longinus, the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus with the spear, and in some stories, was condemned to eternal life, as the Soldier of God. Once in <a time period> (millennia? century? I forgot that...) Lucifer has an opportunity to leave Hell and come to our world via a ritual called The Harrowing. If the right rituals are done, if the right number of people are killed, if the right sacrifice is prepared, he will be able to escape permanently. Kai exists to stop this from happening. 

O'Hara is just a random stranger who got caught up in all this supernatural drama. And Lucifer has followers on this world, a cult I guess, who has come to  the island masquerading as British soldiers, to make sure this Harrowing completes. Twig is the sacrifice, the young body Lucifer is to inhabit should the ritual complete. But between Kai and O'Hara, it is indeed once again scuttled, but not before the island is laid waste, and many, if not all, die.

O'Hara, having been recovered from the island, is interrogated so we have a vessel to hear the story. But also because she was a witness to something, and she also interrupted the event. Once her story is complete, her interrogator has all he needs. And we know who he works for, and we know that Jackie will never escape. But Kai and Twig have. The world was saved.

Its a nice little story. Its the kind of thing I enjoy. My Catholic upbringing allows the weight of Biblical stories to carry through, while my D&D and adventure side loves the idea of a violent, immortal anti-hero existing to undo anything The Devil would have happen. The voice work was done well, and for the most part, the sound design was done so you could follow the action, and feel/envision what the characters were.

I was also spurred down a rabbit hole of my own making, finding out that Longinus (or Casca, as the Barry Sadler books called him) was but one eternal character spawned by The Crucifixion. There is also The Wandering Jew, apparently a man who taunted Jesus on the road to The Crucifixion and was condemned to wander the world until the second coming. I envision an interesting dinner party where Longinus, The Wandering Jew, and Melmoth the Wanderer (19th century Maturin character) discuss the state of the world. I wonder what other mythical immortals are out there wandering, potentially fighting off The Devil?