Television series
The North Water
A six-part descent into cold and cruelty, adapted from Ian McGuire's novel, following a disgraced surgeon aboard a doomed 1850s whaling ship captained by greed and stalked by Colin Farrell's Henry Drax — one of television's great monsters, all appetite and no conscience. It's slow, filthy, brutal television, shot in real Arctic light, more interested in survival's cost than its triumph. Watch it for atmosphere and dread, not comfort.
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The Terror2018
Another doomed 19th-century polar expedition, this one based on the real lost Franklin voyage, with ice, starvation, and something monstrous stalking the crew from outside and within.
But It leans further into supernatural horror than North Water does, which some viewers find undercuts the historical grimness.
Taboo2017
Tom Hardy at his most feral in a filthy, conspiratorial Georgian London, all mud, menace and men behaving like animals under the guise of civilisation.
But Its plotting gets tangled in colonial trade intrigue that's less clean and propulsive than North Water's simple, awful voyage.
The Grey2011
Liam Neeson leads plane-crash survivors against wolves and Alaskan wilderness in a film that's really about mortality and what men become when stripped of comfort.
But It's a tighter, more conventional survival thriller — less interested in moral rot than in raw endurance.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Moby Dick1956
North Water is soaked in Melville's DNA — the whaling ship, the monomaniacal pursuit, the sea as moral void. This is the source current, decades before, in a completely different register of filmmaking.
John Huston's black-and-white adaptation of the novel that hangs over North Water like a shadow — Gregory Peck's Ahab chasing an unkillable idea across the same brutal ocean.
But Its stagey 1950s dialogue and theatrical performances feel a world away from North Water's grubby naturalism.
More like this (8)
True Detective2014
Season one pairs two damaged men on a descent into darkness that's as much about their own corrosion as the crime they're chasing — same bleak, hypnotic pull.
But It's a modern-day investigation rather than a physical ordeal, so the danger is atmospheric rather than survivalist.
Deadwood2004
A frontier town built entirely on greed, violence and self-interest, populated by men who make Drax look almost restrained — filthy, brilliant, morally bottomless.
But The density of profanity-laced dialogue and slow-burn plotting takes real patience to click with.
The Revenant2015
Punishing, gorgeous survival cinema — a man left for dead crawling back through wilderness for revenge, shot with the same commitment to physical suffering as North Water.
But It's more overtly mythic and visually operatic, trading grubby realism for sweeping, painterly spectacle.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World2003
Life aboard a wooden warship rendered in exacting, unglamorous detail — command, hierarchy, and the sea's total indifference to human plans.
But It's far more disciplined and honourable in tone; there's no equivalent of Drax's chaos lurking below deck.
In the Heart of the Sea2015
The true story behind Moby-Dick — a whaling disaster, starvation, and the terrible arithmetic of survival at sea, handled with real weight.
But It's glossier and more Hollywood-polished than North Water's grime, softening some of the horror.
The Sisters Brothers2018no page yet
A Western about two brutal, complicated men doing violent work for money, shot through with dark comedy and unexpected tenderness.
But Its humour and warmth sit at odds with North Water's total bleakness — this one lets you breathe.
Leviathan2013
Same raw, unglamorous physicality of maritime labour and slaughter that North Water insists on, but stripped of narrative entirely — pure documentary texture instead of drama.
A wordless, sensory documentary shot aboard a commercial fishing trawler — nets, blood, gulls, exhaustion, the sheer mechanical violence of hauling a living from the sea.
But There's no plot, no characters, barely any dialogue — it's an immersive experience, not a story, and some will find it alienating.
30 Days of Night2007no page yet
Same premise stripped to its bones: humans trapped in merciless cold with a predator among them who enjoys it. North Water just wears a prestige-drama costume instead of a monster one.
An Alaskan town plunged into a month of darkness gets besieged by vampires — trashy, gory, and gleefully committed to Arctic isolation as a killing ground.
But It's a pulpy genre horror film with none of North Water's psychological depth or historical weight — pure B-movie thrills.
People
Cast
Writing
- Andrew HaighCreator
Production
- Emile ShermanExecutive Producer
- Hakan KousettaExecutive Producer
- Iain CanningExecutive Producer
- Jamie LaurensonExecutive Producer
- Lucy RicherExecutive Producer
- Niv FichmanExecutive Producer
- Kate OgbornProducer