ome housekeeping before we delve into Sky Atlantic’s new offering, The Third Day. The drama is divided into two sections, of three episodes each. The first trio is called Summer, in which a former social worker called Sam (Jude Law) becomes involved with a mysterious, troubled young girl who lives on the even more mysterious, troubled island of Osea. The second is called Winter and stars Naomie Harris as a single mother who brings her two daughters (Nico Parker and Charlotte Gairdner-Mihell) to the same island for a holiday and soon ends up wishing she had sprung for Center Parcs instead. The two chapters will be divided by what the accompanying bumf from its makers, Sky and HBO, describe as: “a theatrical event broadcast online where viewers who seek more will be immersed in the world of The Third Day … Capturing events as live and in one continuous take, this cinematic broadcast will invite viewers deeper into the mysterious and suspenseful world of The Third Day, and blur and distort the lines between what’s real and what’s not.” A bit like those Coronation Street specials where they went off to Las Vegas or Brighton, then – but spooky. If you are already exhausted by the idea, I do understand. And I would, having sat through most of it, by and large commend your perspicacity. As we meet Sam, sobbing as he floats a little boy’s T-shirt down a certain stretch of woodland river in an evidently commemorative act before saving the life of a mysterious, troubled young girl who tries to hang herself in a nearby clearing, it is clear that the makers can conjure the old atmospherics. This is confirmed as Sam takes Epona (for that is her name, and she is played by Jessie Ross) home to Osea, where she is immediately spirited away by the couple (Emily Watson and Paddy Considine) who own the pub and who have seen one too many episodes of The League of Gentlemen. The causeway linking the island to normality – I mean, the mainland – is only open for about seven minutes a day, so they urge him to stay the night. Sam takes a look around at the Victorian corpse photos hanging on the hostelry wall and the preparations for the ancient semi-pagan festival coming up in the village, notes how his tendency to hallucinate vividly coloured bugs and missing children has markedly increased since he arrived, and declines with thanks. But you know what mysterious, pagan-rooted islands are like. He never quite makes it home, even though he really needs to get there in time to bribe a planning officer to approve a development that will help the business he now runs since giving up social work. I enjoyed the mundanity of this subplot-across-the-water more than anything else. The idea of The Wicker Man being thwarted by the need to evade suburban building regulations is tremendous. Then Sam meets a fellow normal. An anthropologist called Jess (Katherine Waterston) arrives at the pub in order, as is anthropologists’ wont, to observe the festival, which she tells him was established by the man who colonised the island as an early rehab facility for addicts and criminals. Narrative-wise she is also there to sleep with Sam, keep him there another night and hear the story of how his son was abducted and drowned. She also provides the psychedelics they take during the festival rehearsal, which unleash a new series of visions and/or nightmarish glimpses of Osean reality for Sam and help none of us a jot. The trouble is that when everything is portentous, nothing is. We may not have seen quite this before – and probably not as stylishly – but we have seen a lot of very similar things. And then we see a lot of these actual things again once Winter comes, and the second hapless traveller pitches up on the island. It may work better if you parcel it out – maintaining, I would suggest, at least the once-traditional week between episodes – rather than binge-watching. That way you can revel in the atmosphere and enjoy the performances and the broad sweep of the thing without getting overwhelmed by the not-quite-crisp-enough plot details, underwhelmed by the various payoffs or distracted by the mounting absurdities. If your tolerance for hooded figures, landladies who look deep into guests’ eyes and make gnomic pronouncements about grief, and a slight but persistent unearned air of cleverness is higher than mine, you will doubtless enjoy. I, however, am heading back to the mainland.