The Third Day miniseries review: Jude Law TV show is a wild sensory experience

Sometimes repulsive but always compelling, Jude Law’s miniseries about a mysterious island is best binged quickly.

Imbued with a heavy sense of dread punctuated by outbursts of graphic violence, the HBO miniseries The Third Day is a wild sensory experience.

Starring Jude Law, Naomie Harris, Katherine Waterston, Paddy Considine and Emily Watson, the six-episode series is part-thriller, part-horror and all-anxiety.

Throughout the whole series, you’re constantly trying to find your bearing – and that sense of uneasiness never leaves you, even as the final credits roll.

The Third Day premieres tonight on Foxtel* with new episodes to debut each Monday but the whole series will be available on demand from today. It’s a show that’s better binged than spread over six weeks, its otherworldly mysteries sinking into your subconsciousness quickly.

If left to marinate over a week, its challenging and sometimes gruesome story may end up being the thing to keep you from returning. What if you’re not in the mood for more innards or LSD-induced trips dripped in blood seven days later?

But with one episode stacked after another, it’s easy to lose yourself in The Third Day’s many puzzles, or become entranced with its vivid, frequently ethereal visuals.

Jude Law as a grieving father in The Third Day.

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Split into two parts, The Third Day first follows Jude Law as Sam, a man caught in the grips of grief over the tragedy of his son’s death. While walking through the woods, he rescues a teenage girl who he takes to her home on Osea, an island off the coast of Essex.

Connected to the mainland by a causeway that’s only accessible during low tides, Osea’s inhabitants are odd and off-putting, including the too familiar Mr Martin (Considine) and his brusque wife Mrs Martin (Watson).

Everyone seems to overshare about their fertility and the pub menu features a drawing of Jesus on the crucifix being hung by a noose.

Sam misses his shot at leaving that day and meets another outsider, Jess (Waterston), an anthropology researcher who fills him in on the island’s belief system, a mix of Druidism and Christianity.

Their faith dictates that Osea, according to the ancient Celts, is the soul of the Earth and when Osea isn’t thriving, neither is the rest of the world.

Sam happens upon evidence of the island’s “traditional ways” – many disembowelled animals – while he dreams (or maybe hallucinates or remembers) disturbing images where he’s ripping his own insides out. The island threatens to engulf him.

Naomie Harris leads the second half of The Third Day.

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The second half follows Harris as Helen, a woman who arrives on the island with her two daughters Ellie (Nico Parker) and Lu (Charlotte Gairdner-Mihell) seeking answers.

Despite being confronted by unwelcoming islanders telling her to leave, Helen is determined to stay the night.

The first three Law-centric episodes, directed by Marc Munden, are evocative and unnerving as the series keeps its secrets from the audience while the Harris-led back-half, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, is more of a classic thriller.

The Law episodes are marked by striking, oversaturated visuals that occasionally bleed into monochrome at the edges of the frame, which is an effective technique in not just creating mystery, suggesting there are many things we, and Sam, don’t understand, but also in commanding your attention.

The bulk of the real horror is that first half, but The Third Day still reserves some of its inscrutability for the Harris episodes, even as its core secret is revealed, and Harris’ performance more than carries the momentum.

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Law too really flexes his dramatic muscles as a man overwhelmed by the world, his internal horrors and the horrors of his surroundings. Both leads are why The Third Day is so oddly compelling, even when it’s kind of disgusting.

A middle part of The Third Day, a 12-hour live theatre event broadcast in the UK in October and streamed on Facebook, isn’t available on Foxtel’s platforms but you can still find parts of it on YouTube.

It’s not crucial to the story but it does bridge some of the details between the first and second parts, plus it features Law digging a grave for an hour.

The Third Day is a strange and occasionally even repulsive TV series. But there’s also something compulsive about how it’s wrapped a story about grief and faith in this otherworldly veil that makes its endurance trial so hypnotic and totally worth it.

The Third Day premieres on Foxtel’s Fox Showcase on Monday, December 7 at 8.30pm. The whole series is available on Foxtel On Demand and Foxtel Now.

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*Foxtel is majority owned by News Corp, publisher of this website