The Haunting of Bly Manor is even better than The Haunting of Hill House

As the way we consume television changes, so do the stories themselves. Some television creators have traded monster-of-the-week episodic storytelling in favor of monster-of-the-season storytelling, pivoting from long-form casts and stories with an implausible amount of recurring drama to shorter, tighter anthology series.

This approach has worked especially well in horror. Shows like American Horror Story, True Detective, and Castle Rock have generated new buzz for each season. Contrasted against shows like Stranger Things, which relies on the same group of people experiencing renewed terror on an annual basis with somewhat diminishing returns, the approach feels like a smart way to keep a television series feeling fresh while still trading on its previous success.

Enter: The Haunting of Bly Manor, the follow up to showrunner Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House. Much like its predecessor, which is based on a novel by the same name from Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Bly Manor is based on a previously published work: The Turn of the Screw, a horror novella published in the 1800s by author Henry James.

The ingredients of the second series are basically the same as the first, though it’s a completely new story. Several cast members from The Haunting of Hill House have returned in new roles. On top of that you’ve got plenty of familial strife, a cast of characters each haunted in their own way, and the bones of it all: the haunted house itself.

Even though the ingredients are roughly the same, Flanagan has better mastered their proportions this second time around. I largely enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House. But I also remember the level of fighting and drama between family members wearing on me. That feeling occasionally took away from instead of contributing to the overall narrative and mood. In this second season, Flanagan has struck an artful balance of family drama, gothic horror, character work, and romance. One important note, though – there are significantly fewer jump scares, which may be a plus or a minus depending on your affinity for those.

The Haunting of Bly Manor opens with, much like the original novella, a framing device. A late night chat at a wedding gives way to ghost stories, and our narrator offers hers. Ironically, this opening device is the least successful part of The Haunting of Bly Manor. It bookends the show but is largely unnecessary, a relic of the original.

Moving past that device, we meet Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti), an American living abroad in England who lands a job as a nanny to Henry Wingrave’s (Henry Thomas) niece Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and nephew Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). Flora and Miles tragically lost their parents in an accident. Shortly after, they lost their nanny to suicide. Dani has to contend with these ghosts as well as a ghost of her own.

At Bly Manor, Dani sees how loss has impacted the children and those who live and work at the estate. This includes the housekeeper Mrs. Grose (T’Nia Miller), the chef Owen (Rahul Kohli), and the groundskeeper Jamie (Amelia Eve). Through the course of the series we also get to see glimpses into Flora and Miles’ relationship with their previous nanny, Ms. Jessel (Tahirah Sharif) and her tumultuous relationship with a friend of the family, Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who continues to make occasional unwanted appearances at the property.

I struggled with Dani’s character – whether that’s due to the casting or to the writing, I’m unsure. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. But otherwise, the casting and characters in The Haunting of Bly Manor are the show’s greatest asset. This is particularly true of Jackson-Cohen’s multidimensional performance of Peter Quint (you may recognize him not only from season 1, but more recently in The Invisible Man) and Miller’s somehow simultaneously warm-but-distant portrayal of Mrs. Grose.

With its approach and with its characters, The Haunting of Bly Manor works in layers. The outer-most layer of the onion is the story of the nanny Dani and the children she cares for. A layer deeper we have the other caretakers still working at Bly; and at the core of the story are older ghosts that haunt the Manor itself. Each has its own unique tragedy and love story. I liked The Haunting of Bly Manor more as I got deeper into each layer in time. I also appreciated the way the story zoomed out slowly rather than darting between such a large cast.

As negatives go, as I’ve mentioned, that first layer, including its romance and tragedy, sometimes is not as compelling as it feels like it could be at the start of the series. This makes the first few episodes feel like the weakest of the bunch, and threatens the ongoing chemistry of the romance we’re supposed to be the most invested in. I’d argue you find a more compelling, subtle love story a layer down. And as far as scares go, I think this season might be less built for terror than the first. But the richer story, well-written ensemble of characters, and unique approach is well worth the trade off, and I’m already looking forward to Flanagan’s next haunted house jaunt.

The Haunting of Bly Manor will premiere on Netflix on October 9, 2020