'The Burning Girls' Trailer Features a Small Town with a Dark Curse
Samantha Morton in "The Burning Girls"
(Photo: Paramount+)
Although American audiences ilkely won't get to see the series for themselves until next year, the first trailer for Paramount+ U.K. series The Burning Girls is peak spooky season vibes, full of encroaching shadows, creepy dolls, ghostly figures, and dark threats.
An adaptation of the C.J. Tudor novel of the same name, The Burning Girls follows the story of a village haunted by its dark and turbulent history, which involves multiple disturbing deaths and disappearances. Five hundred years ago, a group of eight Protestant martyrs, including two young girls, were burned at the stake for their faith. Thirty years ago, two teenagers mysteriously disappeared from the village without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish hung himself in the nave of his church.
Such a history has naturally left Chapel Croft rife with strange beliefs and mysterious traditions, a place that's reluctant to trust outsiders and that actively believes in the supernatural. One of the town's odder annual traditions involves commemorating those original deaths by setting fire to twig dolls known as "burning girls," and there are consistent rumors of a pair of apparitions who are said to appear to those in trouble.
This is the environment that Reverend Jack Brooks finds herself in when she arrives to take up her new job. A single parent struggling to overcome both personal tragedy and professional setbacks, she is looking for a fresh start alongside her occasionally willful daughter Flo. But both very quickly discover that Chapel Croft's bloody past may well come with very real present-day dangers, if the leering neighbors and apparent ghosts haunting the chapel pews are any indication.
Here's the series' logline.
When a female vicar and 15-year-old daughter move to Chapel Croft in the hope of a fresh start, their new beginning get off to a bad start as they find the village is rife with conspiracies and secrets.
The series stars Samantha Morton (The Serpent Queen) as Jack, alongside Ruby Stokes (Bridgerton) as her teenage daughter Flo and Conrad Khan (Peaky Blinders) as Lucas Wrigley, a mysterious alternative teen Flo befriends. The ensemble cast also Rupert Graves (Sherlock), Elodie Grace Orkin (Stranger Things), David Dawson (My Policeman), Paul Bradley (EastEnders), Jane Lapotaire (The Crown), Jack Roth (Medici), Mollie Holder (Sanditon), Safia Oakley-Green (Sherwood), Beth Cordingly (Learning to Walk Again), and John Macmillian (House of Dragon).
The six-part series is adapted by Hans Rosenfeldt (Marcella), with Charles Martin (Skins) and Kieron Hawkes (Ripper Street) taking on directing duties. Richard Tulk-Hart and Tony Wood are executive producers alongside Tudor and Rosenfeldt.
The Burning Girls premieres this October in the U.K. — rightfully just in time for Halloween — but the series doesn't have a U.S. broadcast date as yet. Sadly, it probably won't cross the pond until the beginning of 2024 at the earliest, but hopefully we'll see it sooner rather than later. (It's fine, the darkness of winter can be plenty scary too.)
